one

“Sir, are you all right?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“Are you certain, sir?”

“Yes, I’m fine.”

“Sir, that was what you might call a very close call, sir, that is what I would say.”

“Yes, Mr. Dhapura.”

H. K. D. Dhapura blinked his round black eyes.

“Where have you been, sir? All this past weekend, through the poya day and afterward, I have been wondering and searching for you.”

“Busy,” Durell said.

“Sir?”

“I’ve been busy.”

“Can you stand up?”

“I think so.”

Second strike, Durell thought. No mistake about it now. He climbed slowly to his feet, ignoring the skinny arm that little Mr. Dhapura extended to aid him. He felt drowned in this sea of alien faces and round dark eyes that looked at him, a stranger, in wonder. The noise of the Pettah rang and clashed in his ears. H. K. D. Dhapura began to wave away the onlookers with officious, jerky gestures. The midday sun struck hammers on top of Durell’s head. He felt a brief wave of dizziness when he stooped to retrieve his hat. The muggy air of Colombo oppressed him like a smothering blanket. The sun was blinding. He stooped again to retrieve his sunglasses. Fortunately, they were not broken. He felt naked in the midst of the crowded marketplace. Exposed. There was really no place to hide.

“Sir. Sir? Come, we will take a taxi back to the hotel.” “How did you happen to be along, Mr. Dhapura?”

“Ah. Ah. Fortunate for you, eh?”

“A coincidence?” Durell asked.

“Oh, surely, nothing in this world happens by chance. Nothing in all the universe occurs by accident, sir. Yet I was simply marketing, shopping for Mrs. Dhapura and the children. Inflation is terrible. Terrible. I did not think it would happen here in Ceylon.”

“You were just shopping,” Durell repeated.

“Yes, sir. And I saw you and that madman in the cart who struck you down.”

“You saw the man?” Durell asked.

“Briefly, briefly. Just the merest hint of a glimpse, sir.” “Describe him, will you?”

“I could not properly—”

“You’re paid to be accurate, Mr. Dhapura.”

“Surely you do not think—”

“What did he look like?”

“But the man was simply angry, because you were blocking his way, and he lost his head. Who knows what moves such common men to violence?”

“Where did he go?”

“I did not look. I was concerned for you, sir. I thought you were dead.”

“Almost,” Durell said.

“There is blood on your cheek, sir.” Mr. H. K. D. Dhapura took out a large, immaculately white handkerchief. “If I may, sir—•”

“What sort of cart was it?”

“A vegetable cart, one of those that are very common here in the market. Please, Mr. Durell. You look very poorly, if I may say so. You should have that cut attended to, at once. We have a doctor, you know. One who works especially for us.”

“Was the carter an American?”

“Oh, no, sir. No, he was black.”

“Black?”

“Yes, sir. Very dark brown, sir. Much browner than I.” “How many children do you have, Mr. Dhapura?”

“Sir?”

“How large a family do you support on K Section’s salary?”

“Oh, eight, sir. Eight children. And my mother’s mother, too. And sometimes an uncle—”

Durell said, “Go home, then. Don’t stay near me. It may be dangerous.” Not maybe, he thought. It’s a bummer. Somebody wants to kill me. Who needs innocent bystanders?

Mr. H. K. D. Dhapura looked hurt. His black eyes swam with incipient tears. “But I am supposed to assist you, Mr. Durell. My orders are to—”

“Go back to the hotel. I’ll see you there.”

Mr. Dhapura was mournful. “I understand so little of your business, Mr. Durell. Reports on economic conditions—I was educated for two^1 years at Harvard University, as you know—and checks on certain political affiliations, yes, yes, I can sense these very well, I have a knack for such matters, and I feel I do no harm in filing such reports for your people. I have a great love for America. To me, America is a friend, and a very kind and gentle giant. Sometimes foolish and lacking in understanding perhaps, but not like—not quite like the other great powers. So I help you. But when all the secrecy comes in, when you arrive—a spook, a man named Cajun as a code insignia— this I cannot understand. I feel helpless. I am sorry.” “You’re doing fine,” Durell said. “Have you heard from King and Thompson yet?”

“Nothing, sir.”

“Have you sent messages to Kandy?”

“Yes, sir. There is nothing. No reply. I am worried, I think.”

“They should have reported in last night.”

“Yes, sir. But they did not. There is nothing,” Dhapura said again. “Still, I am sure they can care for themselves, do you not think so?”

“I think so,” Durell said.

He turned away from the small brown man, aware of Dhapura’s fluttering hands, of the big white handkerchief; he wondered if the Sinhala was signaling to someone in the crowded Pettah, setting another watcher, another shadow, another assassin on his trail.

two

He felt a nagging worry about Harry King and Joe Thompson, but they were of less immediate concern than his own safety. In Durell’s business, you looked out for your personal security and survival first. He knew all about the printouts from K Section’s computers on his own survival factors. The job here in Ceylon—or Sri Lanka, as the country was now called—was not supposed to be particularly dangerous. He had resented the assignment, when he’d flown via Air Ceylon from Delhi to Bandaranaike Airport last week to contact Mr. H. K. D. Dhapura. He did not wish to be coddled. He appreciated General McFee’s concern, but he resented McFee’s patronage and considered it suspect, in any case. The head of K Section, the troubleshooting branch of the Central Intelligence Agency, never did anything out of emotional concern. No one could afford such a luxury in this business.

The thought of Aspara moved in him, the scent and touch and sound of her, filling him with memories of the weekend and the poya day just past. The memories were clouded with guilt. He should have gone to Kandy himself. Harry King and Joe Thompson were capable men, knowledgeable in the ways of the Asian subcontinent, almost Sinhalese themselves. No need to worry about them. Aspara, and the fishermen in Negombo, the sea and the sand, had all been beautiful.

He stood alone in the crowded, old Pettah, listening to the noise, feeling the heavy weight of the sun, testing the odors of the place, watching the people.

No one. Nothing.

The spectators who had watched the attack on him drifted away. The women in their batiks and embroidered cotton sarees went about their business of bargaining among the stalls and shops. The men bought, sold, argued, talked politics. Colombo was a blend of the ancient and modem, of Portuguese, Dutch, and Sinhala, and heavily overlaid with the centuries-old British colonial rule, which left its mark in architecture, street names, and the common use of English everywhere.

He felt exposed, his height towering over the Sinhalese around him, like a rock jutting out of a sea of brown faces. He moved across a stunted mango tree, ducked under the tattered canvas awning in front of a Chinese jeweler’s shop, was jostled by people making way for a bullock cart. The man who had struck at him from the other cart was long gone, swallowed by the crowd. Durell had not even seen him. He had been careless—that was evident. He had been thinking of Aspara, drowned in his sexual memories of her. His shoulder still ached from the blow of the heavy cudgel that had just missed his head. No accident, that. Only half an hour earlier, while walking through the modem fort area near the Clock Tower, he had narrowly escaped a wildly driven taxi. Coincidence was not a factor you accepted in the business.

He was being followed.

He moved past a fish market and a small temple from which came a faint echo of Buddhist hymns and the scent of saffron-spiced incense; then he paused at an antique dealer’s tiny window in an arcade. Beyond the entrance to the Pettah, he saw two lumbering double-decked red buses heading toward Vihara Maha Devi Park—once called

Victoria Park after the old queen. He had left his rented car at the Galle Face Hotel, had lunched there, had first begun to feel that inward sense of being watched. Deliberately, he had walked east to the fort area, with its modern banks and shops and tourists, and into this older part of the town. The taxi had almost killed him on Queen Street. The man in the cart—black? Dhapura had said he was— had attacked him here.

Whoever it was, he was a professional.

He paused again at a vegetable stall, where the bins were filled with colorful plantains, melons, pawpaws, mangosteens. There, he thought. Someone had stopped to look into the second jeweler’s stall just across the arcade. Cat’s-eyes and moonstones, gold filigree and ornate Kandyan silver work. The man was just a man, however, wearing a European business suit. He went the other way.

Durell allowed himself to be jostled past a souvenir shop selling plaster casts of ancient Sinhalese frescoes, local pottery, old Japanese plates.

Where was the son of a bitch?

More important, why was someone after him now?

The job was not that important.

Unless, of course, someone in Moscow’s KGB headquarters at No. 2 Dzherzhinsky Square, or maybe in Peking’s Black House, had lifted his dossier with its red tab on it and decided to do something about it. The red tabs meant, Execute. It was one of the reasons that K Section’s computer readouts had placed his survival factor so low.

To hell with it, Durell thought.

He caught a taxi and told the dark little driver to take him to the Cinnamon Gardens, leaving the Oude Stad, the Pettah, behind him.

On his visit to Aspara on the last poya day, she had said, “Why do you mention my former husband, dear Sam?”

“I’m looking for Ira Sanderson,” Durell told her.

“It is a problem for the police, not for you.”

“I’m the police, in a way.”

“But not here. This is Ceylon, Sri Lanka, the Resplendent Isle. We have our own police. Ira will be found.

“I hope so.”

“Nothing will happen to him. Ira was always bumbling about, seeming incompetent, and always came up fine.” “Perhaps.”

“This is not the sort of thing you usually do, is it, Sam?” “Not really.”

“So strange,” Aspara murmured.

“What’s so strange?”

“You. You are different.”

“How, different?”

Her slender shoulders lifted and fell in her glittering, multicolored silk saree. “I cannot say. Like a man in—in a jungle. Very competent, very dangerous. In some ways, in your mannerisms, you frighten me. As if you bring danger with you. It sits upon you like a mantle, or—”

He smiled. “Or a shroud?”

“I only think of you as being full of life.”

“Thank you.”

“I cannot help you about Ira,” she had said.

“Don’t you care what has happened to him?”

“We were married once. We are divorced. He fathered my only son. We have not seen each other in some years. He will be returned safely. Kidnapping is a sudden disease that has taken the whole world. Kidnapping, hijacking, insane massacres, ostensibly for political purposes. Let our police handle it, dear Sam, dear Cajun.”

“They want half a million dollars in cash.”

“Yes.”

“And a plane, immunity to fly from your Lanka to— where?”

“It is up to your government to decide whether to pay the ransom. We cannot. I am not so important in the Ceylon government that I can influence decisions like this. True,” she smiled, “I am ambitious. If a woman can be prime minister today, perhaps I too, as a woman, can hope to be the prime minister tomorrow. It is my hope. It is my dream.”

“You’re very beautiful,” he had said. “Not like the usual politician. I’d almost forgotten.”

“I am Sinhalese,” she said proudly. “I come from a very ancient people. Ira is not such an important man. A diplomat in your corps, a dabbler and devotee of archeology. Why should you be concerned with his vanishment?”

“It’s my job. I was sent to take care of it. I’ll get him back.”

She smiled, a bit wanly. “Dead or alive?”

'“Alive, hopefully.”

“Can you authorize payment of the ransom?”

“Yes,” he admitted. “I have that authority.”

“Then do so,” she urged. “Let it go. Do not fight it. Let the people who took him have their money and their plane. Do not fight them.”

“Do you know who they are?”

She was silent. She had already adapted to the statesman’s habit of weighing words, of smiling, of quick pondering behind a polite and facile facade. But she was beautiful, Durell thought. He remembered her from another visit here in Colombo, shortly after her divorce from Ira Sanderson, of Boston, Mass. She .had been very vulnerable then, and he had not intended to take advantage of her emotional disarray; but it had happened. It was something that had seemed natural and inevitable, and when they had made love, some years ago, each knew it was a temporary thing, a phase, a reaching for something both needed at that moment.

It’s probably over now, he thought.

He had gone to Negombo to see her. Negombo was a small fishing village only an hour from Colombo on A3 road. It was a place they had visited before. There was an old Dutch church, and ruined fortifications, the lovely old Angurukaramulla Buddhist temple, a lagoon, and the vast, brilliant stretch of the Indian Ocean beyond sands that seemed of pure gold. At the moment, the sea was like a blue jewel, while salpadda boats behind the- bungalow came down the canal from the north, floating lazily through reflections cast in the water by leaning coconut palms. They had lunched on the veranda of her bungalow, eating curried prawns and a dessert of aluwa, a confection of rice, cadjanuts, cumin, and coconut syrup. The coffee was sharp and bitter, the way she knew he liked it. He watched a bullock cart with its rounded roof plod slowly along the edge of the canal, wheels creaking. On the beach, fishermen worked on square-sailed, clumsy-looking catamarans, which were admirably suited to fish the blue Indian Ocean waters. Small creatures rustled in the thatched roof of the bungalow.

He asked again, “Do you know, Aspara, who the kidnappers are?”

“I could guess.”

“Let me hear your guess, then.”

“It’s the PFM, of course. The Tamil rebels. What country does not have their violent equivalent? They need money, they need financing for the mobs they raise for their rioting. What do they want? The ancient wars between Tamil and Sinhala are long over. Will they revive the old hatreds, split our new nation, divide family against family, neighbor against neighbor, religion against religion? I do not know. I tell you, Ira was always an innocent. They have taken him because your country will pay the ransom without making too much of a fuss.”

“We’ll pay only if I say so,” Durell told her.

“I would not want Ira to be harmed.”

“It’s possible that he will be. The innocent are so often the victims in our world today,” he said.

“Sam?”

“It’s my job, Aspara.”

“I would not want you to be harmed either.”

He smiled. “I’m not an innocent.”

She turned to him. Her great dark eyes seemed enormous, reflecting the sky and the quiet sea, the lush green of the village. Something more seemed to move in her gaze, he thought. Fear, perhaps. Her concern was not for him. Her thoughts might be as ancient as her proud ancestry. She was tall for a Sinhala, and perhaps one of her ancestors had been a Dutch colonist long ago. Her face was gentle, somehow tragic as many Sinhalese looked tragic. He wished he knew what she was thinking and how she was thinking—as a woman? A diplomat? A former wife? A former lover? He wished he did not have to live with perpetual questions and suspicion. But in this business he was what K Section had made of him. Then he corrected the thought: he was what he always had been, what his potential had insisted on him being and doing. He preferred the solitary life, the danger, the caution required to subsist in the cities and jungles of the world. The planet was going mad, he sometimes thought. He did his best to stamp out the insane sparks and brush fires that sprang up here and there in the far corners of the earth. It was his job. He did it well. He wanted peace more than most men, because he had too often seen the face on the other side of the coin. He did not call himself a patriot; but he had risked his life, and his body bore too many scars of too many encounters with the forces of those with ambition, with lusts for power that were almost an anachronism in today’s tightly knit, interdependent world.

He stood up.

Aspara said, “You are going?”

“I’ve sent two men to Kandy to inquire about Ira there. He had a house near the city, where he studied Ceylonese antiquities.”

She nodded. “Yes, I know.”

“I have to look after them,” he said.

“I thought each of you accepted his own risks.”

“That’s true.”

“Then stay, Sam,” she said.

The creaking bullock cart, with its arched roof, had passed the bungalow. He watched it out of sight. The carter had seemed an ordinary man of Negombo. But one could never be certain.

He said, “I don’t want to implicate you in this, Aspara. Your political position is delicate, and any scandal—” “No one knows I am here with you.” She smiled. “Why did you watch the cart that way?”

He shrugged. “It’s habit.”

She shivered a little. “As I said, you somehow frighten me, and yet—”

“Do you want me to buy Ira back from the PFM?”

“Not out of personal motives. But it would be the easiest solution to the problem.”

“Where do you suppose they are keeping him?”

“We still have jungles and mountains, swamps and caves, in the interior of Ceylon where few men go.” She waved a delicate hand vaguely. Her great eyes regarded him with a new light. Her silk saree changed colors with the lowering sun. Under the silk, her body was ripe and gentle, an offering to him, spoken with her eyes, her hands, the way she leaned forward, and he remembered her with an intimate hunger.

“Dear Sam Durell-—She checked herself. “I would be devastated if I believed you came to see me only on your— your business. Do stay.”

“You should be more discreet, Aspara. If your political opponents learned of a liaison with me—”

“I told you—we are secret here, no one knows.”

“Don’t count on it,” he said. “My man in Colombo, a Mr. Dhapura, might want to get in touch with me. He’s pretty good at it.”

“The hotel man?” She laughed softly, dismissing the risk. Her laughter was like the distant tinkling of the monks’ bells in the Angurukaramulla temple. “We will be most discreet, dear Sam.”

three

He thought, Aspara in the Sinhala language means heavenly maiden.

He sat down again.

There are varying techniques taught at the Farm in Maryland, K Section’s training and refresher school for recruits and old hands. The methods and patterns of shadowing a subject or of shaking oft' a tail are constantly updated, studied, modified, and polished. There are the parallel methods, using two or more agents, the jump-ahead, the close or the distant pursuit, the use of transportation, taxis, buses, private cars, the overt contact, the brush contact. These are used whether the subject is the pursuer or the pursued. Durell knew all the techniques and had refined some of them to his own purposes. He was being trailed. He was a target for assassination. What he did not know in this instance was why he was the objective. Nor did he even remotely suspect the identity of his pursuers.

The taxi driver followed his instructions when he left the Pettah and headed for the Cinnamon Gardens. Durell told him to go slowly. He offered himself as a target. But nothing happened. At the gardens, in the residential area, he told the driver to circle the big museum. Traffic was

heavy. The big lumbering buses made splashes of red against the blend of modem and old when he rode back to the commercial fort area of Colombo.

Nothing happened.

He could not spot anyone.

Book technique in this pattern was fine, up to a point. It ignored the personal, the intuitive hunch, the primal sense of pursuit. Like a primitive in the jungle, he could sense in his gut that a predator was after him. It did not make sense. The incidents with the taxi and the angry carter could have been coincidence. He did not think so. He looked at the hawkers and at their wares spread on the sidewalks, at the sleek American cars, the mixture of Western and traditional clothes, the narrow alleys radiating from broad, clean boulevards. He thought of the Arabs, the Persians, the Chinese who first came here to trade for spices; the Portuguese, Dutch, and English who had followed. In the 14th century a Chinese trader named Wang Ta-Youan had first given Colombo her name; fifty years later, Ibn Batuta, a Moor from Morocco, named Ceylon the island of Serendib. Each had left a mark on the timeless island, once a land of elegant kingdoms, of Buddhist worship in conflict with a later flow of Tamil Hindus from India.

“Driver, I didn’t tell you to go here,” he said suddenly.

“There is trouble up ahead, mister. A protest march, yes? There have been riots, mister. Are you sight-seeing Colombo? I could take you to the zoo—the elephant circus there is outstanding. Or perhaps you would like to see the Kandyan dancers at the harbor? Mister?”

“Turn right,” Durell said.

The taxi driver kept straight ahead. “Nehe, karuna kara. No, please.” He chattered in Sinhalese for a brief spate. Durell looked at the back of his round head. “The Naga is raising a great political disturbance here, mister.”

“The Naga?”

“He calls himself the Cobra’s Bow. He heads up the PFM—the People’s Freedom Movement. Tamils, all of them.” The driver spat out the window of the taxi. “You would not want to see this. It gives tourists a bad impression of our country.”

Durell took out his gun, a snubby-barreled .38 Smith & Wesson revolver. He held it on his knee.

“Turn right,” he said again.

“They talk—the PFM—of discovering the Buddha Stone. Have you heard of this?”

“No.”

“It is disturbing. A most precious religious relic! In their hands! It is not to be tolerated.”

Durell put the muzzle of his gun to the driver’s right ear. “Stop the car. Prevasimin. Be careful.”

The man turned his head, just a little. Durell could see only the curve of his brown cheek, the pouting mouth, the gleam of a dark brown eye.

“You’re not Sinhalese,” Durell said.

“No, sir. I am part Portuguese, part Tamil. I come from Trincomalee. My family, my wife and children, five there. Please, mister?”

“Stop the car. Who hired you?”

“You did, sir.”

“Who told you to wait for me at the Pettah and pick me up if I looked for a cab?”

“I do not know who the gentleman was.”

“How much did he pay you?”

“Twenty dollars.”

“American or Hong Kong?”

“American, sir. Please. Your gun—”

“What did he look like?”

“He was black, mister.”

“African black or American?”

“How can I tell you that, mister? He spoke in good English.”

“British or American accent?”

“American, sir.”

It still didn’t make sense. He smelled the sweat of sudden fear from the taxi driver. The sophisticated techniques taught by K Section were suddenly scrubbed from his mind. Anger touched him, and he pushed it away. Anger never helped. He kept his gun at the driver’s head until they halted in a slot between bullock carts and stalls, somewhere near Dematagoda Road. There was a clash of brazen noise nearby, the mindless roar of an inflamed crowd. He smelled smoke in the humid afternoon air. He thought of making for the US embassy at 44 Galle Road, in the Kolluitiya district. Too late for that.

The mob poured down the narrow street like a flood released from a bursting dam. As riots go, it would scarcely make the local headlines. But Durell sensed an immediate and personal danger in it. He saw the red banners fluttering, with Sinhalese, Tamil, and Arabic script, heard the chanting of “Naga! Naga! Naga!” and saw several streams of men pour toward him like the reaching pseudopods of some elemental beast.

He jumped from the taxi behind the bullock cart. The driver slid out on the other side and vanished. Durell let him go. He put his gun away and pressed back against a fruit stall. The pungent smell of ripe melons touched him, along with the smell of the crowd. There were smashing sounds, yells. More smoke drifted across the narrow street. A woman screamed, making a high ululating sound in the steamy air. People ran everywhere, jostling and striking each other in an effort to escape. Some stalls were smashed. A window was shattered, a crystalline sound above the yelling.

Durell felt the presence of someone near him. A wildeyed man with a red rag tied around his head edged around the bullock cart. The man was wiry, dressed in a worn Western shirt and stained slacks. There was blood on his left arm. He was bald, brown-skinned. Black, Durell thought. A black American. Not this one.

The man screamed at him. A knife flickered. Hired help. Durell hit the man with the edge of his hand against the neck, not hard enough to kill him. The man went down, strangling; rage faded from his dimming eyes. Durell moved around to the front of the cart. The narrow lane was a flood of shouting, struggling men. He kept close to the buildings, felt himself bumped and shoved, backed into a doorway. The killer was nearby. He could feel it. He recognized none of the congested faces around him. He felt for the doorknob behind him, turned it. He smelled stale cooking, the effluvium of poor sanitation, and stepped backward. His heel touched the lowest tread of stairs behind him. Carts and stalls were being overturned by the angry mob. A torch was thrown at the bullock cart he had just quit.

He backed up two steps, heard a sound above and behind him, felt dismay at the tall dark figure looming at the head of the dingy steps above him.

A professional job, Durell thought.

A press of ragged men blocked the street door. He could not get out that way. He had been neatly boxed, first by the taxi driver who’d dropped him in this special spot, then by the rioter’s halfhearted attack that backed him into this doorway. The thoughts flicked through his mind in split seconds.

“Hello, Cajun.”

The voice echoed in the steep, dark staircase. He could not see the face above him. But the dim light ran a liquid finger along the barrel of a Luger in the man’s hand.

“Sorry, old man.”

“Why?” Durell called up to him.

“It’s my job.”

“To kill me?”

“All in the day’s work, old man.”

The voice was garbled by the echoing walls of the narrow, dingy staircase. It tickled something in the back of Durell’s memory. He could not place it. The straddlelegged man above raised the long-barreled gun a few millimeters. Outside, the crowd roared and smashed things and chanted slogans, as crowds did everywhere in the world. He smelled curry cooking. He thought of Aspara and the beach and the placid Indian Ocean. He cursed his failure to rate his shadow as important, from the first.

“So long, old man.”

It was the other’s mistake. The warning gave Durell time to move. There was a dark-painted brown door to his left. He spun, smashed at it as the Luger suddenly crashed. The door panel was flimsy. He felt the bullet tug at his shirt sleeve. A professional, up there, but not armed well enough. To ensure a killing, you use automatic rapid fire. He felt the second slug graze his right arm, then he was through the broken door, stumbling into shadows, the smell of cooking, and the rapid rattle of the other’s heels coming down the stairs. He glimpsed a sparsely furnished

room, a large Chinese bed, a Grand Rapids dresser, a portrait of the lady prime minister on the wall. A woman stood there, frightened by his sudden assault on her home. A small child in a white dress hugged the skirt of her saree. Durell had his gun in his hand now. He leaped for the opposite door. The steps on the stairway suddenly halted. In the street outside, the chanting and burning and smashing went on. He halted in the doorway, drew a deep breath, leveled his gun at the empty entrance he had smashed through. The woman whimpered. The child stared at him with great, liquid eyes. The woman had a Hindu caste mark on her forehead.

For a count of three breaths, he waited.

The woman whispered, “Please go. The back way.”

He shook his head, watching the stairway door. The man on the stairs was careful. The game was even now.

Durell was a tall man, with a heavy musculature, which belied his speed. His black hair was touched with gray at the temples. His gun hand was steady. All of his being was spent on listening now for a telltale sound from the creaky steps out there. He heard nothing, except for the woman’s breathing in the heavy heat of the room. She had clamped a -thin brown hand over the child’s mouth. No one crossed the opening of the broken doorway. It was a stalemate. Either could retreat. But Durell no longer looked for escape. As a boy, brought up by his Grandpa Jonathan in the deep recesses of the Louisiana bayous, he had been taught the ways of the hunter and the hunted. He knew the silent patience of wild things when trapped, the silent waiting for time to present a way out.

Shadows flickered as people in the street rushed by. Smoke drifted into the room. A man screamed, close to the building entrance. Durell breathed lightly. He could have waited forever; but he knew the woman and the child might break at any moment. He took a step forward. The woman shuddered. The man with the Luger would be waiting for this move, balancing his patience against Durell’s. Durell was three steps from the sill. Silently he started down to his knees, reaching forward for the doorjamb that tilted inward toward him.

The child broke away from his mother and began to screech in a high, thin falsetto.

Too late.

He heard the scrape -of feet on the steps and charged forward through the opening to spin around and turn to the stairs. Footsteps whispered. He raised the gun, held his fire, went up the stairs two at a time. Nothing to be seen. The building had three floors, and the landing above was empty. A door was swinging slowly shut. He flattened against the wall, considered the IDE techniques taught at the Maryland Farm. This man with the Luger knew them all. He wished he’d seen more of him than just the brief silhouette of blackness he’d glimpsed from the foot of the ramshackle stairway. The sounds of the mob were muted now. He slid toward the closing door, sniffed the air, exercising all his senses for a clue. Tobacco. American cigarettes. He looked for the butt of the cigarette the man must have smoked while waiting up here. Nothing. He had pocketed the evidence, but he hadn’t been able to dispel the trace of tobacco smoke.

He went through the door in a rush, crouching low, jumped to one side in the shadowed darkness. Two terrified old men were on their haunches against the wall.

“Which way?”

One of them pointed a skinny, shaking hand toward painted windows that gave no view of the outside. One of the windows, was open. A flight of wooden steps led down to an alley below, cluttered with crates and boxes. Any number of hiding places. Durell stood well back from the window. The man could move fast. And quietly. He turned, ran back down the inner steps. The woman from -the room below stood in her broken doorway. Durell plunged out into the street. The bulk of the mob had passed, leaving a wreckage of carts and stalls, a few trampled banners on the pavement. He ran through the stragglers to the alley entrance. He saw no one who remotely fitted the looks of his assailant. The alley was empty. Perhaps the -other end. He moved forward, watching the broken crates and junk in the narrow passage. The suffocating heat hammered at the back of his neck. He was bathed in sweat. He was halfway through the alley when he heard the police sirens, late as usual, dispelling the mob. He halted. His opponent was gone. He felt the sudden lift of oppressive intuition; the weight and pressure of danger had vanished.

He came out the other end of the alley. The woman and the old men in the house would rush to tell the police about him. He hoped their descriptions would be as vague as the usual amateur’s. In the business, you avoided publicity, shunned the news, made no contact with local police. His opponent would feel the same way.

Durell pocketed the gun and looked for a taxi.

four

Mr. H. K. D. Dhapura fluttered his hands.

“Nothing, sir. I have nothing on it. I am so sorry, sir. I have done my best in this job, I have been happy with the employment, it is certainly in a good cause, I am sure of that. But at the moment, I fear I am a failure.”

Durell said, “You received no signal at all from King or Thompson?”

“I have told you, Mr. Durell—”

“All right. There hasn’t been any trouble up at Kandy, has there?”

“No, sir. Of course, the telephone does not reply at Mr. Sanderson’s house there, but naturally, no one would answer, since the time he has been kidnapped—”

“No servants in the house?”

“I would not know, sir.”

Durell said, “You’re supposed to know, Mr. Dhapura.” The Sinhala looked anguished. “About this man whom you say is trying to kill you—” He paused and swallowed. “Is it safe for you here?”

“It’s supposed to be.”

“I have done everything I could, I assure you on my honor, everything, everything; I have thought and thought and considered all eventualities.”

“I’ll want to code a message to Washington in about an hour,” Durell said. “Make certain the transceiver is working.”

“Yes, sir, I am very good at electronics.”

“In an hour,” Durell repeated.

The Royal Lanka Hotel did not quite live up to its resplendent title; but it was not meant to, and had been chosen by K Section, along with Mr. Dhapura, because it was shabby, seedy, and more than rundown. It was across the channel from Beira Lake, not far from Galle Road that ran south through the city toward Dehiwala Zoo and eventually to the posh old-style colonial resort of Mt. Lavinia on the beaches. The Royal Lanka was favored by third-rate salesmen from India, Japan, and the Mideast, and its lobby was flavored by Arab burnooses, and a Sikh’s tall turban, the toothy chatter of Tokyo Honda dealers. Big wooden fans turned idly in the tiled ceilings of the public rooms. The hotel served K Section as a safe house, a Ceylon Central, and a place for industrious young men from Washington to formulate their analyses of economic and political and foreign influences in the newly renamed nation of Sri Lanka. Until now, Mr. Dhapura had functioned with efficiency in the job of running the Central, but at the moment, Durell was not so certain.

The elevator was an open-cage affair. He avoided it and took the broad staircase to the second floor. Whoever was after him surely knew about Royal Lanka. He went up to the third floor, moved down the wide corridor, stood under a slowly rotating fan, then returned down the wooden staircase to the second level. No one was in sight. The hotel was built in pre-airconditioning Victorian days, and the ceilings were high. There was a sand urn for cigarettes at the open bird-cage elevator. An American filter cigarette had been stuck into the urn. He pulled it out carefully. The end was cold. It didn’t have to mean anything.

His room was at the other end of the hall. He heard a radio playing next door. A man talked urgently in a room he passed. He heard a woman loose a spate of Urdu on a companion behind another door. Everything seemed normal.

He took out his gun, tried the old lever handle very slowly, pressing down on it. The door was not locked. He had left it with the latch on. His gun felt solid and reassuring in his hand—and then he suddenly backed off, kicked the door open, and sprang inside.

“Hold it. Just like that. Don’t move.”

The figure waiting for him in the armchair that faced the entrance was grotesque, startling, unnatural.

He lolled at ease, but his face was enclosed in a brilliantly painted ritual mask of the sort carved by the craftsmen at Ambalangoda.

Durell almost squeezed the trigger.

The voice behind the mask was muffled. “It’s a gag, Cajun. Your nerves are very, very good.”

Durell said, “Take if off. Now.” He looked at the man’s hands. They were empty. “You’re a black man.”

“Reckon so. I was just funnin’ you, Cajun.”

The voice tickled his memory again. “Willie?”

“The former Major William Wells, rank dispensed by the Boganda People’s Revolutionary Army. Once a mercenary, the idea kind of gets into your blood.”

“Take off the mask,” Durell said again.

“Sure thing.”

It was Wells. Even lounging in the chair, Durell remembered the magnificent, competent figure of the man, the intelligent brown face, the sad and secretive eyes. Memories of the incidents in Boganda last year flickered and flashed through Durell’s mind. He did not let his gun waver. Wells, as a mercenary, had been on the opposite side that time, hiring his capacities to an uprising that had given Durell some difficulty during a siege of the Getoba district in the African capital. In the end Willie had changed sides and had been offered a job with K Section. Durell had never expected to see the man again,

“What are you doing in Sri Lanka?” he asked.

“Working, man. Like you.”

“For whom?”

“After Africa I went home to DC and took you up on your offer. Went to see your boss, General Dickinson McFee. Strange little fellow. No nerves in him. He hired me, allowed I might be useful in K Section.”

“You once said you were a citizen of the world.”

The black man shrugged. “I’ve got to eat.”

“And you’ve been tailing me?”

“Yup.”

“And trying to kill me?”

“It makes me sad. I like you, Cajun.”

“Why are you trying to kill me?”

“Sit down, Sam,” Wells said gently. “Relax. I’m very, very good at my job.”

“I know that. Answer me.”

“It’s orders. I’ve been sent by K Section—by your former boss, General McFee.”

“Former?”

“He gave me the orders to kill you, Cajun.”

Durell’s face did not change. “Why?”

“You’re a traitor. I was told to eliminate you. Don’t move, Sam. I'm sorry. If you take another step, the gun goes off. It’s right behind you, over the door. Taped good and tight. The line goes across the floor, there, you can see it. Step on it, any place, and your head gets blown off.”

Durell stared at the black man. He did not believe anything Willie Wells said. He was aware of a vast confusion. “I could kill you first,” he said finally.

“You’re not the type. Sit down in that chair next to the door, right behind you— and face me. I’m sorry, buddy. I really like you. I really do. As much as I can like anyone in this world.”

“I’m not a traitor,” Durell said.

“McFee thinks you are.”

“That little bastard. After all the times—”

“I’ve seen the evidence, Sam.”

“There can’t be any evidence.”

“I saw it. Airtight.”

He thought of something. “Does Dhapura know about you?”

“No. I showed him my credentials. Told him we were old friends. Told him I wanted to surprise you. Sit down like I said. We’ll talk first.”

Durell turned his head finally. Wells’ gun was there, aimed at him. It was not such an effective trap. One step either way, and the gun would miss. It was childish. It was another game Willie was playing, like the startling Ambalangoda mask that now rested on the floor beside Wells’ chair. He looked around the room. Everything had been moved, searched, taken apart and put together with a certain arrogant carelessness. Through the tall windows and beyond the iron balcony came the normal street sounds of Colombo’s traffic. But everything seemed suddenly tilted, thrown out of normal perspective.

It wasn’t possible to come to this, he thought, after all his years in the business. There was sometimes the problem of defectors, who had to be eliminated, yes. Misguided or greedy, men, or those who had cracked under the strain and gone over the wire to the other side, to seek sanctuary, money, another world that existed only in their tormented minds. It was not possible to accept. But suddenly he believed Wells, this lounging, ominous and professional figure, who spoke with a mortal simplicity.

“How much time do I have, Willie?”

“As long as you like—within reason.”

“Can you tell me about it?”

“You’re a cool one, Cajun. Don’t play for extra time. You know all about it, anyway.”

“I’d like to hear the evidence against me. I tell you now, there’s been a mistake.”

“Does General McFee often make mistakes like this?” “No,” Durell admitted. “Never. But tell me.”

“Okay.” Wells hitched himself up in the chair, using his elbows on the arms. He still looked relaxed, but not in his eyes. There has to be another weapon, Durell thought. One that was not a gag. He sat down carefully in the straight-backed chair beside the door and kept his S&W on his knee, the muzzle pointed at Willie Wells’ stomach. A gut shot frightened any man. But Wells did not look frightened. He still seemed sad and quietly confident. It was just a job for him. A contract. All of which made Wells the most dangerous predator of them all.

“I’m curious,” Durell said, urging him to talk.

“You sold out. A man like you, Cajun, in the business so long that you couldn’t quit even if you wanted to—a man might get tired of it and lose his nerve, knowing the odds get longer and longer against him every day he sticks with it—it could be that. So you sold yourself.”

“To whom? For how much?”

Well sighed. “I have to reach in my pocket.”

“Go ahead.”

“Take care of the wire under the carpet.”

“I could kill you right now,” Durell said.

“You really should. Because my contract calls for wiping you, Sam. And I’m going to do it too.”

“If you can.”

“I can,” Wells said.

He was cautious taking the papers from his pocket. He put them on the rush carpet and toed them toward where Durell could pick them up. Durell thought of contact poison in the papers, of thermite impregnation, of a booby trap. The papers looked clean enough. He bent forward, keeping his gun trained on the black man, and touched the papers with his fingertips, not taking his eyes from Wells. Wells said, “It’s all right. Just Xerox copies of Swiss bank accounts. Your signature is on them all. For secret accounts amounting to half a million dollars.”

“Chicken feed,” Durell said. “Would I sell out for that little? I could get much more.”

Wells only shrugged.

The papers looked authentic. Incredibly, it was his signature on the account in the Suisse Banque Cantonale de Geneve. He knew the manager there. The manager’s name was Fouquier. The name was on the papers, under his own name. The writing looked genuine. It was the best forgery Durell had ever seen. His face did not betray the manner in which he was shaken.

“I’d have to study these carefully—when I don’t have to keep an eye on you, Willie.”

Wells shrugged again. “Sorry.”

“Who is supposed to have paid me all this?” His mind turned on what other weapon Wells had concealed here.

“The Russians? The Black House? And McFee really believes all this?”

“He’s not infallible. But there’s more.” Wells paused “Do you deny these are your signatures?”

“Of course I deny it.”

“There is also King and Thompson,” Wells added. “They’re up in Kandy,” Durell said. “I sent them of three days ago, and I haven’t heard from them since. Art they in this lunatic scheme with you, Willie?”

“No. They’re in Kandy, all right. For good. And that’s why I’m not sorry to do what I have to do, Sam. You sen’ them up to be killed. I don’t know what else this is al about. I don’t give a damn about Sanderson, who’s beer kidnapped. It happens almost every day now. Routine. A new tool of the lunatic terrorists. But you don’t kill youi own men every day, do you? It turns my gut over, thinking you did that.”

Durell spoke with deadly calm. “Are you saying thai King and Thompson have been murdered?”

“You ought to know. You sent them into an ambush up there. I don’t know why, and I don’t ask questions aboui it. You did it yourself. You shot them, two days ago.”

“But I wasn’t—” Durell began. Then he was silent thinking of Aspara. Wells said, “So where have you beer for the past weekend? You’ve got an alibi, Sam?”

He couldn’t destroy Aspara. “No, no alibi.” he said. “Dhapura doesn’t know where you went. He can’t 01 won’t say. I know you’ve been in Kandy.”

“I haven’t been to Kandy.”

“Ah. Somewhere else?”

Durell had felt anger before, but nothing like this.

Wells persisted, “It’s important. Can’t you say when you’ve been?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“It’s nothing to do with you.”

“Or with Ira Sanderson? Look, your two men wer< boxed near Sanderson’s house at Kandy. You sent then there to see what they could learn about Ira’s activities be fore the PFM snatched him. They were boobied, they were smeared, man, and they were good fellows, both of them. You’re the only one who knew what they were up to. Did they learn something about you that made them dangerous to you? Hey? You look funny, Sam.”

“I feel funny,” Durell said.

“So you went to Kandy and dropped ’em because they knew you’d gone over the wire? Is that it?”

“No.”

“Then where were you?”

He couldn’t tell Wells he had been with Aspara. He didn’t trust Wells. He didn’t know what to believe. It was incredible that General McFee had put him on the extinction list. He couldn’t accept it. But here was Wells, big as life and twice as lethal. If he betrayed his tryst with Aspara, the woman would be destroyed politically. The times were antiforeign; her career would be ended. He couldn’t do that to her.

He looked at the mask, the ves mahuna that Wells had put on the floor beside the easy chair.

“I want to talk to Washington,” he said..

“No way, man.”

“I don’t believe Harry and Joe are dead,” he said.

“They are. You killed ’em.”

“And the signature on that numbered Swiss account is a forgery,” Durell said.

“They’ve been checked by the experts at No. 20 Annapolis Street. You signed that account. That half-million is yours.” Wells’ hands were quiet on his thighs. “I’m really sorry, Cajun. You’re very good at your job. There’s no use going around in circles over this. I’m taking a chance just , talking to you. I tried for you three times, and no go, you’re too fast and too smart. But I thought you had a right to know why I’m doing this to you, for old time’s sake, for the time you helped me in Boganda.”

“You’re insane,” Durell said.

“Aren’t we all? So goodbye, Sam.”

He heard a small click and got out of the chair an instant before the bomb went off. There was an electronic whir a fractional second before the explosion came. The wooden chair, with its padded back, had been rigged for an execution.

The explosion was not loud. It was a fragmentatioi device, designed to burst into Durell’s back as he sat in the chair. He felt the heat and shock of the blast as h( dropped to one side, landing on his knees, his gun loose ir his fingers. The force of the explosion, without Durell tc cushion it, lashed out at Wells. He went over backward ir his armchair, his face suddenly a startled mask of blood There was no time to think. Durell scrambled forwarc through the smoke and the noise, aware of a pain in hi; right shoulder; he retrieved his gun. Wells was crawling or all fours, trying to reach into a pocket. He kicked at the man, felt his heel impact on the other’s ribs. Wells grantee and fell to one side and came up with his Luger. Durell hi him with the butt of his .38, desperate now, aware of fire crackling behind him. Wells had done a good job, his best But it was not good enough. He was still alive. He felt the black man claw at his ankle as he struggled up, felt i numbness in his shoulder. Wells’ eyes were desperate angry. There was blood on his neat white shirt. Several fragments of the small bomb had hit him full on as he had faced Durell’s chair. Durell hit him again. The man’s grip was stubborn. Durell kicked at his clawing hand, stamped on it, swayed erect. The room was full of smoke. The execution chair in which he had been sitting was splintered the padding on fire. There was no time to think. He hi Wells once more, and the man collapsed, tried to lift and crawl forward a bit, then collapsed again.

Durell stood uncertainly, aware of pain and anger, of incredulity that this had happened to him.

He looked at Wells, on his face on the floor. He wanted to kill the man. His finger tightened on the trigger. He trembled from head to foot. Wells rolled over on hi back, groaning. The man’s teeth gleamed between tight lips. He looked up at Durell’s figure towering over him.

“Lucky,” he gasped. “You’re lucky, traitor.”

“I haven’t gone over the wire,” Durell rasped. “Not ye1 anyway.”

He forced his finger to ease its tension on the trigger Wells stared at him from pain-clouded eyes. The rest o his face was hidden with blood. Durell turned and went to the door and left the hotel room.

five

Mr. Dhapura wrung his hands.

“I am sorry, please, I assure you, oh, please—”

“Your radio,” Durell said. “Quickly, now.”

“Forgive me, yes, sir, certainly—” Dhapura paused. “You need a doctor, sir. What happened? I heard something upstairs. I believe there was a lire—”

“Your staff put out the fire. How long did you know that Wells was here?”

“I did not know, I swear it, I apologize, please, your back is all bloody, it is terrible—”

“Let’s try the radio.”

“Of course. Come. Can you tell me what happened?” “No. Let’s go.”

Mr. Dhapura rolled his eyes and backed toward the rear door of his hotel manager’s office. The excitement in the lobby of the Royal Lanka had died away. No one had called the police. As far as Durell knew, no one had found Wells in his room. The man had gotten away somehow, despite his wounds from the bomb blast—an exhibition of pure willpower.

There was a small file room behind the main office, then a narrow corridor and a flight of stairs.

“The staff’s quarters,” Dhapura explained. “And the supply lockers. Beyond is the communications room.” “What’s in the supply lockers?”

“Everything. China, linen—”

“Bandages?”

“A first-aid kit, yes.”

“Get it.”

“You will need new clothes, sir. What happened?”

“Stay calm, Mr. Dhapura,” Durell said.

“But I did not expect all this here, sir. I run a quiet establishment. My job with your people was a—a sedentary one, sir. Collecting data, listening to conversations in the lobby. Sending in reports. I have never seen a man like you, sir, with a gun. I did not guess it would come to this—”

Mr. Dhapura’s hands shook as he took out a shiny first-aid kit from a locker and thrust it at Durell. Then he hurried up the flight of steps, looking back with frightened eyes. The communications room was in the rear of the hotel, in a small wing beyond the rooms where the hotel servants were quartered. Dhapura worked at a ring of keys, and at last the door was open. Durell felt a momentary dizziness as he followed the man inside.

The TK-12 transceiver gleamed against the wall in the hot, shadowed little room. Durell was aware of the pressure of time, of Wells, who had vanished, but who certainly would not give up his objective. He felt exposed on all sides, hunted by Wells, perhaps by the PFM, an outcast from the world in which he had lived and worked for so long. He did not want to think about it. It was too much to accept.

He waved Dhapura aside, paused a moment to collect the Q Code in his mind, and snapped on the. transceiver. The world-wide radio transmissions established by K Section would reach Washington in seconds, his message confirmed by his code call. He began working out a Q inquiry directly to General Dickinson McFee at No. 20 Annapolis Street. Mr. Dhapura made small moaning sounds -and tentatively pushed the first-aid kit toward him across the table. Durell nodded and shrugged out of his shirt. The Sinhala made shocked clucking sounds as he looked at Durell’s back.

“A doctor, sir. All these metallic fragments—”

“From a bomb,” Durell said.

“But—why, sir?”

“That’s what I’d like to know.”

“But who did it, sir?”

“One of our people,” he said grimly.

“S-sir?”

“Put a bandage on it, please.”

“Yes, but I am not a doctor, I know nothing of wounds, it might be serious and get infected.”

“Do as I say.”

He sent his Q inquiry and waited, sent it again. Silence. The transceiver hummed. Mr. Dhapura attended to his shoulder, patting fearfully at the flesh wounds.

He sent his message a third time.

Nothing happened.

“Are you sure this is operative?”

Mr. Dhapura patted his hands together. “Yes, sir. Only the other day—”

He stared at the radio. It was working, all right. His message had gone through. But there was no reply.

He was cut off from Washington.

He was outcast.

His Q code should have received a reply in no more than ten seconds. But Washington did not want to talk to him. There was no court, no judge, nowhere to appeal.

He snapped off the radio.

“Sir?”

“Let’s go,” he said.

“Where, sir?”

“Come with me.”

“Sir, that man in the room—did you kill him?”

“No. I didn’t want to. He was mistaken in his orders.” He urged Mr. Dhapura out of the little cubicle and along the corridor back to the staff’s quarters. From the end of the hall, he could see into the lobby. Things had quieted down, but there was a uniformed policeman questioning the clerk at the desk. The clerk turned and pointed back toward Dhapura’s office, and Durell took Dhapura’s thin arm and urged him out through a side door.

“Sir, I cannot leave the Royal Lanka. There is too much to be done here—clerical work—and my wife’s brother-in-law is coming to dinner, all the way from Jaffna, to stay with us. Besides, I am not accustomed to your sort of—ah—work, sir, and I would only be a hindrance to your efforts—”

“Is your car outside?”

“Yes.”

“We’ll get it.”

The parking lot behind the Royal Lanka was hot and stifling, boxed in by buildings on every side. Durell moved with Dhapura across the hot pavement. The car was a Toyota that had seen better days. Mr. Dhapura nervously unlocked it. There was a streak of dark sweat-stain soaked through the back of his drip-dry coat. He was growing bald on the top of his head. Durell was certain he carried no weapons. The parking lot seemed empty of any interested spectators.

“Where to, sir?”

“The general post office, at the fort. Stop on Queen Street, near Air India.”

“The traffic makes it difficult to park there.”

“We’ll find a place. See to it.”

Mr. Dhapura drove with care through Colombo’s seething traffic, weaving the little car quickly among the pillarbox-red double-decker buses. He seemed calmer behind the familiar wheel of his car.

“You do seem to be in grave trouble, sir.”

“What do you know about it?”

“Nothing, except that obviously someone is after you, someone very determined to kill you. This affair of Ira Sanderson’s kidnapping must be more important than you thought.”

“Yes.”

“May I ask why Washington did not answer your emergency call?”

“I’m persona non grata,” Durell told him.

“Sir, that is not possible. I do not meet many men like you, men who have been forged, so to speak, in the fires of your profession.” Mr. Dhapura seemed pleased with his speech. “You could not have done anything wrong. I have an instinct for people, sir, my wife always says so, I rarely make an error in judging personality and character. To me, if I may say so, you are an exemplar of your business. I would trust you with my life, sir.”

“You may have to,” Durell said simply.

In the general post office, amid Colombo’s smart new business buildings, Durell asked the Sinhala to stand watch in the center of the crowded floor, and then went to a pay phone, and went through the complicated business of placing an overseas call to Geneva, Switzerland. Monsieur Fouquier, the manager of the Suisse Banque Canton-ale de Geneve, would be just starting his business day in his office overlooking the gleaming Lac Leman, with its towering fountain. Durell had met the man twice on other occasions involving K Section business. He knew he certainly did not have a numbered account with M. Fouquier.

He waited with some impatience while the operators whispered, chanted, and crooned their lexicon of formal signals. Luckily there was no extraordinary delay. The overseas cables were clear. He watched for ten minutes from the phone box while Mr. Dhapura nervously paced the crowded post office floor. Then at last the crisp tones of the Swiss banker reached him.

“Oui, monsieur?”

“This is Durell. Sam Durell.”

There was a pause. “Ah?”

“Do you remember me?”

“But certainly, m’sieu.”

“It seems I’ve done business with you recently.”

“On the second of March, yes, M’sieu Durell.”

“My account is in order?”

“But of course, m’sieu.”

“You remember the total balance?”

“Precisely one half-million in American dollars, yes.” “You are certain?”

“M’sieu, do you question my memory?”

“No, Fouquier, I question the individual who opened that account in my name.”

“But it was you, M’sieu Durell!”

“Did I do so in person?”

“I saw you in the bank from a distance that day. Unfortunately, I was hurried by a luncheon appointment. But you waved to me, I bowed, and later I learned the nature and purpose of your business.”

“You saw me?” Durell asked.

“Certainly, M’sieu.”

“It is true,” Durell said, “that I was in Geneva at that time. But I did not visit your bank. You couldn’t be mistaken?”

The telephone was silent for so long that Durell thought the overseas connection had been broken. Then, “But I have your signature before me at this moment. Please, can you tell me where you are? Your government—” There was another pause. “I could have your signature expertised, of course, but I do not understand. We are not anxious, m’sieu, to have another scandal in our banking system. You understand that such publicity works most adversely in our direction. No, there is no doubt.” M. Fouquier’s voice was firm. “I saw you. It is your signature.”

“Merci,” Durell said.

He hung up.

Dhapura hurried toward him like a leaf blown before a tempestuous wind. “There are police at the main doors, sir.”

“We’ll go out the other way.”

“I worry about the reputation of my hotel. This man— this black man?—surely escaped, even if he was injured. But now that he is hurt, will he not give up?”

“No, he will not give up.”

Mr. Dhapura skipped a step .o keep pace with Durell’s long stride. “Where do you wish me to take you now?” “The police station on Maradana Road.”

Dhapura was aghast. “The police?”

“I’ll have to trust you. I want to make inquiries about my two men, King and Thompson.”

“You wish me to go in to speak to the police?” Mr Dhapura smiled. “I am most pleased. It means that yo\ trust me, sir, and return my great admiration for you—”

“I don’t trust you.”

“But with the police, I could betray you—”

Durell said quietly, “I don’t think you will.”

In a side street Mr. Dhapura found some shade in which to park his battered Toyota. Durell got out and sat on a wooden bench set out on the sidewalk. He watched the cycles and buses and cars and carts; he watched the varied costumes of the Ceylonese drifting by in the late afternoon heat. Colombo was a clean city in contrast to most Asian towns. He felt alone in it. He had never felt so alone before. K Section had been his home for too many years, he thought. He was aware of a bitterness in him that could not be subdued, and regret about Harry King and Joe Thompson. They had been reliable, dedicated men Nothing should have gone wrong at Kandy. It was a routine check-out of Ira Sanderson’s empty house up there in the hills of central Ceylon. He listened to distant temple bells. Several shaven-headed monks shuffled by in the windless heat, chattering amiably, their saffron robe bright patches of color among the passersby. He could see the police station door from where he sat and waited for Mr. Dhapura. He realized he was beginning to accept what Wells had said. Someone had framed him by depositing five hundred thousand dollars in the Swiss bank, an by murdering King and Thompson and making it look as if he had done it himself. He had an alibi for that, if he wished to use Aspara. His loyalty was first to his own survival and the success of the assignment. That was a right for a professional. You knew the risks and accepted them. But Aspara was innocent. Her career would be ruined if their weekend tryst became public knowledge. He was not ready to destroy her, as yet. In any case, K Section might not accept the alibi. The net that had been cast over him was too secure for that. Washington must be very sure he had betrayed K Section and sold out—to whom?

He wondered. Someone had hired a reasonably close double to appear in Geneva when he was there last March and open the numbered account in his name. A look-alike who had been trained and who had practiced forging his signature. Which meant a long period of preparation, a far-reaching plan begun not yesterday but weeks and months ago. He mentally flicked through the dossiers he often studied at the Washington headquarters. Nothing came out of it. No special face or data emerged.

There had to be a rational plan behind the scheme to make him look like a defector. It was a costly thing, involving half a million dollars and a cold-blooded killing of two men, simply to make him an outcast. Sooner or later, he would be approached by someone, somewhere, somehow.

The thought made him feel better. If he could stay alive until then, avoiding Wells, he might catch a thread that would lead him into the center of this tangled web.

As it was, he felt like a fly kicking at the sticky strands of a spider’s trap that had caught him.

He began to feel even better, thinking of this. He did not underestimate Willie Wells, who was an angry man, a ruthless man, a mercenary devoted to returning due weight for his pay. Wells would not give up. There was no way in which Durell could get K Section to call him off.

He watched the police station doorway.

Mr. Dhapura did not appear.

He checked his watch and saw two policemen come out of the station. They went the other way. The temple bells stopped their melodic chiming. He stood up. Pressure ran along all his nerves. His shoulder ached where Dhapura had bandaged the scratches and furrows made by the bomb fragments. He flexed the fingers of his right hand.

The Sinhala was suddenly there on the sidewalk, flapping his arms and looking this way and that, as if lost.

Durell quit the bench and went back to the gray Toyota and stood beside it. Someone who looks enough like me to fool M. Fouquier at a distance. The thought flicked through his mind. His mnemonic training at the Farm had given him almost total recall of the dossiers he had scanned. There was a Russian, an \ndrei Kubischev . . . same build, same black hair touched with gray ,. . but Ku-bischev worked under Colonel Cesar Skoll of the KGB Not possible. He watched Mr. Dhapura flutter across the hot sidewalk toward him.

“Sir. Quickly. Into the car.”

Durell got in and took the wheel this time. “What did you learn?”

“Poor men, they are truly dead. Foully murdered. An ambush, shot down at Mr. Sanderson’s empty walauwa outside of Kandy. It is dreadful, dreadful. I would no have believed it would come to such violence. I am not a violent man, sir. I detest harming so much as an insect, believe that all of God’s creatures have a divine right to exist, unmolested by man. I am a vegetarian, you know. Unlike some, who think the All-Knowing placed animals upon this earth for man’s use, I feel it is a crime against His Beneficence to take anything’s life. Those poor men. A tragedy—”

Durell cut into the nervous flood of words. “What did the police say?”

“I tried to be clever, sir. I identified myself as the manager of the Royal Lanka and mentioned the two guests Mr. King and Mr. Thompson, who mysteriously failed to return from a tourist expedition to the ancient ruins around Kandy. They were extremely grateful. They will examine my register to make certain. But your men are dead, Mr. Durell.”

“You say they were murdered?”

“The police are looking for you, sir. They believe you journeyed with them and for reasons of your own, you foully killed them. They were each shot in the back of the head, right on the doorstep of Mr. Sanderson’s vacant house. A tea farmer who was cycling by found the bodies—late yesterday afternoon.”

“Why do they think I’m involved? Where did the police ever hear my name?”

Mr. Dhapura swallowed. His dark eyes, which could sparkle with laughter or glisten with tears from moment to moment, slid sidewise at Durell as he drove the Toyota back into the center of the city. A pair of buses held him up for a moment.

“They know all about you, sir. The American embassy has released a criminal file on you.”

“A criminal file?” He had thought of the embassy as a refuge, a place where he might catch his breath. But it would be Wells’ headquarters now. “What does that mean, Dhapura?”

But he knew what it meant. The buses moved, and he shifted gears in the Toyota and turned right on Lotus Road, not far from the Ceylonese House of Representatives. Flowers bloomed on carefully tended lawns. The hedges were neatly trimmed. He turned north toward the harbor, intending to turn again out Layard’s Broadway to Prince of Wales Avenue, which would lead either to Negombo, twenty-two miles away, or out along the Kelani Ganga to Kandy, a distance of seventy-two miles.

“Sir, I do not know why, but I have faith in you,” Dhapura murmured. “I will do all I can to help, my own very meager best, I assure you, except that I must beg that you do not involve me in any violence.”

“Fine,” Durell said. “I'll do what I can.”

“I see that you are such a man—a man of violence, I mean.”

“Only when necessary.”

“You have killed people?”

“Yes,” said Durell.

“Many?”

“Only when necessary,” he said again.

“One could discuss the necessity of taking a human life under any circumstances. However . . .” Dhapura went through his hand-waving motions. “It seems that the police have been advised that for personal reasons, for which they have no clue, you tricked your associates—business partners, they believe—into traveling to Kandy with you, where you shot them, removed all identification from their bodies, and returned to Colombo. They know you by name, sir. I am sorry. I cannot imagine how they have come to believe this. But it is true they are looking for you. A manhunt, if I may use such a distasteful term.” Dhapura paused. “Sir, what will you do?”

Durell pulled the car to the curb. Traffic flowed by without incident. Nobody seemed to be on their trail.

“I suggest you get a taxi and go back to your job at the Royal Lanka,” he said.

“Sir, I would like to do more, if I can.”

“You’re a peaceful man, Mr. Dhapura. If you stay with me, you will find it more than distasteful.”

“But you need help, sir.”

“You can stand by for me at the hotel.”

“But where will you go like this, alone and hunted? It is dreadful, dreadful.”

“Yes,” Durell said. “It could even be fatal.”

six

The sun was an enormous, wavering red globe over the western horizon of the Indian Ocean when Durell drove into Negombo. The square patched sails of the local fishermen, returning in their catamarans with the day’s haul, were outlined in black against the glare. There was no relief from the heat. Bullocks, waiting for the men to return, were drawn up on the beach under the graceful coconut palms. The crowd was composed mostly of old men, women, and children. A barge chugged along the old Dutch canal. Buddhist priests were gathered under a huge, spreading tree, their robes a splash of bright color against the heavy green foliage.

Aspara’s bungalow was at the end of a sandy lane not far from the highway. It had a thatched roof and a wooden veranda, the roof eaves upturned slightly in Eastern style. The garden was heavy with shadows. There was no sign of the police. Durell knew that if he concentrated too much on Wells’ pursuit, he would lose sight of his main objective. All the same, he was aware of the danger of a booby trap or Toyota to the back of the bungalow into a thatched lean-to covered with leafy vines. He could hear the distant murmur of the placid surf when he cut the engine.

One of Aspara’s small penchants was her yellow 1938 Rolls-Royce touring car. It stood like a gleaming, sleek monster beside Dhapura’s drab little Toyota. The long hood gave off a sharp ping! as he walked around it. He felt the heat in the smooth metal and wondered where Aspara had been in it. He was relieved to see that she had not yet returned to Colombo.

Someone said arrogantly, in an American voice, “So who are you, chum?”

Durell turned too fast, his knees flexed, his right hand moving for his pocket. Outlined against the light from the shed entrance was a tall, slim figure, not quite u man, too old for a boy. The mop of wild dark hair made him look savage in silhouette, and then he looked like all the rest of the uniform youth on campus and commune in the States. He wore patched and faded dungarees, was barefooted, and had a gold ring in his left ear.

“You’ve got to be the American that mom was talking about,” the youth said. “Right? You look jumpy. About to rip off the old lady’s chariot? She’s not expecting you back.”

Durell said, “Are you Aspara’s son?”

“Georgie Sanderson, that’s me. The only scion and heir of my silly missing father. The bane of my mother’s existence.” Young Sanderson laughed; it was more of a giggle. Despite his dark Sinhala complexion, his eyes were a bright, brilliant blue, hostile under his smile. He finished, “So get lost, will you? Take your car and beat it.”

“Where did you come from?” Durell asked.

“It was a blast. Some rock under the pine trees in the park. America the beautiful, tin cans and litter and all. Colorado, man. And a beautiful flight on Pan Am to Katamuyaka Airport. I’d split from classes, man, when dear old daddy was snatched by the local activists. So when I read about it, I thought I’d come and lend moral support to my reactionary, nationalistic, chauvinistic mama.”

“I see,” said Durell.

“Do you think it’s a put-on, baby?”

“Yes,” Durell said. “Do you think it’s fun and games?” “Oh, man, like it’s beautiful. Should I be wringing my hands? Old Ira just shoved me away from one school tc the other in the States. I’m not American, I’m not Sinhalese, I belong like nowhere, pal. It looks like a ball here. Are you an American cop? Fuzz? Pig?”

“You’re out of date,” Durell said.

“You act like fuzz.”

“You act like an idiot,” Durell said.

He walked past the skinny young man and headed for the bungalow and Aspara. George’s giggling laughter followed him through the afternoon heat.

Aspara was beautiful and serene. Her oval face showed no surprise at Durell’s sudden reappearance. She moved like a wisp of bright, silken cloud under her saree, and Durell remembered her long, smooth body, the voluptuous passion that could flame from her slightly slanted eyes. Her dark hair gleamed like midnight velvet, caught up in an intricate knot at the nape of her slender neck. Durell looked at the ivory pins that held her lustrous braids together as she bent to pour tea. An old glass lamp with a dark green shade shone in a corner of the big, teak-paneled room. The sliding doors were open to admit whatever vagrant breeze might come from the Indian Ocean.

“I see you have met George,” she murmured.

“Did you send for him?”

“I did not know he was coming until his phone call at hour ago from the airport. I went to fetch him. I was glac of it. You left me lonely, dear Sam, and a bit confused.” He lifted a hand, then dropped it. “You should senc him back to the States.”

Aspara raised her eyes from the tea service. “But I wan' this to be his home. He is Sinhala, he is of Sri Lanka.” “He’ll just be a burden. Send him away.”

“Sam, it is his father who has been kidnapped.”

“He doesn’t care about his father—or for you.”

“You have already judged and condemned him?” Durell felt exasperated. “I’m in trouble, Aspara. I need help.”

“I know. It has been on the radio—the police are looking for you. You did not tell them you spent the poya day with me?”

“No.”    \,

“You were silent to protect me? If your safety is at stake, I will not let you sacrifice yourself for me.” She smiled. Her mouth was ripe. He remembered her kisses in the moonlight. “That is foolish. My political career could surely survive a scandal.”

“Not in these times. Not if the newspapers knew I’d spent the time with you while your husband is missing.” “My ex-husband,” she said gently. “I have not seen Ira in years. Drink your tea, dear Sam. Are you hungry? I can get a meal for you.”

“Later. I don’t want you to be personally involved. I couldn’t even tell you what the difficulties are. I don’t know them myself, as yet. But you alone know I was not in Kandy.”

“I know that.” She sat on a large stool before him, her eyes solemn in her young face. “The poya day was a dream we shared. I am knowledgeable enough to have no illusions about lasting love between us. I am an ambitious woman, you might say. The fortunes of my country are chiefly in my heart. You understand this. The poya day was beautiful. But it is done and ended, is that not so? So we can begin as friends who love each other and wish to help each other, yes?”

“The police—and others—are looking for me,” he said. “It’s very dangerous. I’ve already risked your career by staying with you. I just want to know more about Ira. I want to know why his kidnapping by local terrorists is so important. Somebody—someone—is going to a lot of trouble, more than it’s worth, going after bigger game than I can identify at the moment. You have to tell me,

Aspara.”

“But I know nothing more.”. She stood up, her every gesture a thing of grace. Durell wondered where her son had gone. He listened to a jet come in low overhead, headed for Bandaranaike Airport nearby. The sound was incongruous in this peaceful setting, although he knew there was 50 no peace for him anywhere. Aspara glided to the veranda window, then turned with her hands clasped before her. “It is my fault you are in such trouble. I asked at the American embassy, when Ira vanished, that you should be sent here to cope with it. Did you know that?”

“No.”

She smiled. “I never forgot you, of. course.”

“I’m glad.”

“It is shameful for my country that this has occurred. That an American diplomat and distinguished archeolo-gist, helping my people rediscover their past, should be held for ransom by terrorists. And such strange demands! A half-million in cash, a jet plane, a guarantee of nonmolestation. We have only one more day—less than twenty-four hours now—to meet those demands. My government is not willing to yield to the PFM. It would continue the precedent set in other nations. But I think Washington is willing to pay the price. I did not think Ira was that important.” She made a mouth. “It is not from past affection that I became concerned in this, dear Sam.”

“I know. By why did George show up just now?”

“Why shouldn’t he?”

“It’s not a coincidence,” Durell said.

“Dear Sam, you are always too suspicious.”

“I have to be. Have your police discovered what Ira had been doing in the Cinnamon Gardens when the PFM took him?”

“He was at the museum of antiquities there.” She touched her silken black hair and then sat down in a fine Bombay chair across the room from him, as if she were carefully keeping a distance between them. The intimacy they had shared was gone. “We know it was the PFM,” she said quietly. “They shouted for their leader, the Naga, the Cobra’s Bow, and left their demands scrawled on a note for the curator. Nobody really knows what Ira was interested in, so far as old ruins are concerned. He dabbled. It was one of the depressing things about him. He never finished his projects; he was like a seed-flower blown on the wind. Did your men find anything in Kandy?”

“They’re both dead.” He drew a deep breath and told her about Wells and his mission to kill him. His anger about it was controlled now. She listened passively. Behind her beauty was a quick, alert mind, able to absorb Ceylonese politics and the balance of forces between Buddhist, Moslem, and Hindu sects, the tensions of ancient wars, which had once ravaged the island. She said, “I have heard rumors about Ira’s interest in an artifact called the Buddha Stone. It is only a myth. Ira is a foolish, impractical man. For the rest, you know as much as I do.”

He said, “A taxi driver mentioned the Buddha Stone, too. This Naga—this Cobra’s Bow—who is he?”

She dismissed it with a wave of her long-fingered hand. “A terrorist. He is not deep or subtle. A youngish man, full of old angers. Or a pawn in power politics. Perhaps Peking pays him. Perhaps Moscow. There are pressures here to negotiate naval bases that might control the Indian Ocean. The Naga claims it would bring prosperity to us. I have argued in our government circles that it would reduce us to a puppet’s status. The Naga means anarchy and danger to our young nation. It is not to be tolerated. Please, dear Sam. Drink your tea. Have something to eat.” He shook his head. “I have to get to Kandy.”

“How will you do that? The police—you will continue to look for Ira?”

“That’s what I was sent here to do.”

“But if your own people now want to—to eliminate—”

“I still have my job to do. In the course of doing it, maybe I can clear myself.” He paused. “You haven’t seen anyone in Colombo who might look like me, have you? A man of my height, dark hair, similar features. Not a double, of course. But someone who might pass for me, at a glance, at a distance.”

“No, Sam. No one like that.”

He listened to the faint scuff of a footstep on the veranda and stood up. There was a"creak of porch steps, a crunch of gravel going toward the garage shed. “Excuse me,” he said. He moved fast toward the back door. The light outside was still dazzling. The outrigger fishing boats, with their square sails, were all drawn up on the edge of 52 the beach. A tree toad croaked in the branches overhead. The garden, with its jacaranda. Vesak orchids, and cabbage palms, was in sharp shadows. He drew his gun.

“George!” he called.

The sudden roar of a car engine in the thatched shed turned him that way. He was aware of Aspara behind him, her saree whispering. He jumped down the steps and ran toward the shed. Polished metal flared in a slash of sunlight. It was the old Rolls-Royce. It swung toward 'him as he jumped for the vintage running-board and grabbed at the wheel. The boy grimaced, tried to shove him off, screaming at him. The heavy old car rumbled off the drive, slammed into thick shrubbery between the garden and the beach. Durell leaned far in and twisted the ignition key, heedless of the boy’s clubbing hands.

“Oh, you bastard of a pig! You mother—”

Durell hit him, not heard enough to break anything, but enough to slam George’s head back. He pulled open the door and dragged the boy from behind the wheel and dumped him without ceremony under a hibiscus shrub.

Aspara called, “Sam, please—”

“He was going for the cops. He listened to everything. I don’t know why. He’s here to make trouble. I smelled it in him the moment we met.”

“You can’t judge my son—”

Durell straightened. Aspara’s normally calm face was indignant, and he wondered if he had lost the only possible ally he could count on. Then her shoulders relaxed, and she knelt beside the sprawled young man, whose bare feet were blackened with dirt, whose hair was a wild mop over his face.

“Poor George. It is not his fault that he does not know where he belongs,” she said. “His father was ineffectual with him. He is neither American nor Sinhalese. What a torment it must be for him.”

“George or no George, I need your help,” Durell said.

She looked at him. “What can I do?”

“I can’t get into the hills alone. I have to start at Kandy. Can I have your Rolls? They might not suspect, if I’m driving it.”

She shook her head. “Dear Sam, I’ll go with you. And we’ll take George too. We must. Otherwise, he will do you harm. I agree with you. I can feel his hostility too.”

He thought about it for only a moment.

“All right. Let’s go.”

seven

There were still two hours before sunset, but there would be a full moon that night. Durell agreed with Aspara; he had to take George with them. Alone in the bungalow, he would find some way to reveal Durell’s presence to the police. The boy was deliberately antagonistic. Durell wished he could simply knock him out, tie him up, put him out of action for a time. But needing Aspara’s help, he could not attempt that.

Aspara drove the heavy, powerful Rolls. There was not too much traffic on the road to Kandy, that reminder of ancient kingdoms and crumbled glories. They did not return to the Victoria Bridge to pick up the main highway into the hills, but took a smaller road, paralleling the old Dutch canal. Traffic kept to the left, in British style. They passed bullock carts, a few venturesome farmers oh motorcycles rigged to carry passengers on either side of the rear wheel. Rice paddies, gleaming wetly in the lowering sun, stretched out on either hand. Coconut palms leaned over the road and made swift, flickering shadows, sometimes tunnels, through which they passed.

It would take two hours to cover the climb to the city of Kandy. George sprawled sullenly in the leather rear seat of the open Rolls-Royce. His mop of dark hair blew in the wind. His blue eyes were heavy-lidded and blank; his mouth was partly open, showing small, uneven teeth. Durell wished he knew what the young man was thinking.

Now and then they passed irrigation tanks, artificial lakes that looked bloody in the light of the late afternoon sun. Spoonbills and ibis stood on spindly legs and stared at them as they went by. Hornbills and flycatchers flashed in the dark foliage of the foothill forests, and once he glimpsed a sambhur stag, standing magnificently at the edge of a tank. The tall trees were festooned with vines and wild creepers, each with their own colored blossoms.

They came to the crossroad at Mirigama, and a police car was waiting there.

Aspara bit her lip. “We’ll have to bluff our way through, dear Sam.”

Durell turned to meet the sullen gleam of George’s eyes from the rear seat. “Don’t make a peep, son.”

“What if I do, pig?”

“I’ll blow your head off,” Durell said flatly.

“Bluff. Shit. You won’t touch me, because of mom.”

“Don’t make a garbage dump out of every place you walk and breathe,” Durell warned.

A uniformed patrolman- strolled toward' them, thumbs hooked in his gunbelt. The other man remained in the car. Halfway toward them, he recognized tire distinctive Rolls-Royce and touched his cap with a forefinger. He waved them on. Aspara smiled at the two men and shoved the car into gear, stepped on the gas pedal. Beyond the first curve, she drew a deep breath. “I was worried. George, you behaved very well.”

“Just wait, mom. This p.D isn’t snatching me without paying for it. I didn’t come here to play cops and robbers with a fink like him.”

“Why don’t you like Sam?” she asked mildly.

“He knows why,” the boy said.

Durell watched George’s eyes. It was no accident that he had flown in from the States at this moment. It wasn’t filial love for his vague, scholastic father, Ira Sanderson that had brought him to Ceylon. George was not concerned about that. Durell had the feeling that the boy knew all about it.

“If he tries anything,” he told Aspara, “I’ll have to hurt him.”

“No, Sam.”

George snickered. “Big man, you don’t put a finger on me, right?”

“Just behave, then.”

“I’ll do what I’ve got to do,” George said.

“You mean you have to follow orders?”

“What orders?”

“From the people who sent for you.”

George shouted angrily, “Nobody sent for me! What are you talking about?”

Aspara took the heavy Rolls around a sharp curve it the dusty road, and they began a sudden, steep climb toward looming hills ahead. Beyond were sun-torched mountain peaks, some reaching a mile high, clad in the acid green of terraced tea plantations, more rice paddies dense forest, and the occasional village clinging to the side of an artificial blue tank.

“We’ll have to go through Kagalla,” Aspara said “From there, it’s straight on to Kandy—as straight as the mountain roads let us go, of course. There are several other towns on the way, and we’ll surely run into other checkpoints here and there. George, you must behave yourself.”

“Why are you helping this spook?” George demanded “I know my rights. He’s taking me with you against my will. It’s an abduction, that’s what it is.”

“Don’t talk nonsense.”

The boy snickered. “The spook will never find old Ira anyway.” Then he subsided into the back seat again.

The landscape changed abruptly. Beyond Kagalla the road climbed steeply. The wide paddies and little villages where country girls sold cadjanuts and pineapples to tourists gave way to sudden, dark gorges, where water rushed down from the towering mountains. Here and there were pools, and in one a herd of working elephants were being bathed by their keepers. The huge gray beasts lay on their sides in shallow water while the men in white breechcloths splashed and scrubbed them with soap. The sun was lower now. The flanks of the mountains were bathed in dark shadow. Near Kadugannawa, with its vast view of the distant table mountain called the Bible Rock, Aspara had to stop for gasoline.

The valley far below was terraced in rice; the hillsides were sharp with the green of cropped tea plants. The air felt clearer than it had been down on the tropical coast.

The gas pump attendant was a small man in a violent red shirt, with a toothy white smile. He recognized Aspara and bowed exaggeratedly.

“Madame Aspara! May I offer condolences in regard to your former husband, Mr. Sanderson? Ah, it is young George—”

“Thank you,” Aspara said calmly. Then she added abruptly, “George, please stay in the car.”

George grinned. “I have to use the facilities.”

The boy got but of the Rolls with a quick, vaulting motion, landed on the dusty ground, clapped his hands together. The station was only a thatched hut standing on stilts above the slopes, which dropped down toward the tea fields below. Farther down, more elephants plodded homeward along a dirt track. The high shouts of their attendants came dimly through the echoing mountain stillness.

Durell got out of the car quietly. Aspara’s face was pale. “Yes, you must stop him,” she said quickly. “It is true he acts strangely, so hostile—”

George was already gone, scrambling up the rough ladder to the thatched stilt house. Durell followed quickly, paused in the interior gloom. A quick suck of breath from George warned him. Something whirred through the air, smashed against a bamboo pole. The boy’s face was a pale blob in the shadows of the hut. The floor creaked as he rushed at Durell, a heavy wrench in his hand. The tool whistled past Durell’s ear as he ducked the wide, swinging blow.

“George, I meant it. I don’t want to hurt you.”

“You bastard, shacking up with my mother—”

“You don’t know anything about it. Who sent for you^1; Why did you come back here?”

The wild-haired boy came at him again. The heavy spanner grazed Durell’s- shoulder as he jumped back. He did not reach for his gun. The floor shook and dust rose about their feet as he caught George’s arm, twisted, bent il backward. George yelped, but he was surprisingly strong Durell forced him backward until they struck a crude workbench. The boy’s hands scrabbled for another tool to use as a weapon. Durell pinned him against the sharp edge of the bench.

“Now talk,” he said thinly. “Tell me what you’re doin^ here.”

“I—I’m a patriot,” George gasped. “Let go—”

“For which side?”

“The People’s Freedom Movement—I’ve been working in it, raising money back in the states—”

“And your father? The PFM took him, right?”

“No, no—”

“Who did, then? Who’s asking for the ransom?”

“They’re using the leader—the Cobra’s Bow—but it’s all a front, I can’t tell you—”

Durell bent him farther back. The boy groaned, reached out, found a hammer, swung it at Durell’s head. Durell drove the edge of his hand against the other’s neck. It could have been a lethal blow, but he held back at the last moment, aware of his anger and frustration at his own situation. The shock of the blow snapped George’s head to one side. The pale blob of his face, under his wildly swinging hair, slid way. All resistance went out of his thin, muscular body. Durell caught him before he hit the floor and eased him gently down.

George was still breathing. Durell considered his open mouth, his long arms, and straightened, sighed.

Someone was coming up the ladder of the stilt house. “Mister? Madame Aspara asks—”

“We’re coming right out.”

The attendant said, “The telephone doesn’t work, anyway.”

“Yes.” Durell picked up George and carried him to the door of the hut. The air felt cool outside. The attendant’s brown face peered up at him from the foot of the ladder. “Mister George is ill,” Durell said.

“Yes, sir. I understand.”

“Sam?” Aspara said.

“It’s all right.

She started from the Rolls, her body fluid, swift, then checked herself and returned to the wheel. Durell carried George to the back seat, dropped him in, and took his place beside the girl. Aspara’s eyes were wide and questioning.

“What was it?” she asked.

“He’s a member of the PFM,” Durell said.

The true name of Kandy, in the heart of Ceylon, was Kanda Uda Pas Rata—the Five-Kingdoms-On-The-Hill. The city was the real capital of the Sinhalese. The road to it crossed a river, the Mahaweli Ganga at Peradeniya, where another roadblock waited for them. But Aspara’s unique old Rolls-Royce was apparently above suspicion.

A smart-looking lieutenant bent ceremoniously toward Aspara. “You go to attend the Essala Perahera, Madame?”

“Yes. Is there any trouble?”

“None at all. Please continue.”

Aspara drove on. Durell sat beside her and said, “He never even looked at me.”

“I am well known here,” she said.

“But he was very careful not to look at me.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Neither do I,” he said.

“Is—is George all right?”

“He’ll be out of it soon. What’s the Perahera?”

“Sam, please. He’s a very confused young man. It’s not his fault he is the way he is. Ira neglected him. I was busy with my own political career. Between us, he didn’t know which way to turn. He is neither here nor there, do you understand? He is basically a gentle boy—

“Not any more,” Durell said.

Aspara said, “I could not bear it, if anything happened to him because of you and me—”

“What is the Perahera?” he asked again.

“Oh. It’s an annual pageant and festival at the Dalada Maligawa—the famous Temple of the Tooth. There is supposed to be an actual tooth of Buddha there. Each year, between your July and August—our lunar month of Esala—a replica of the Tooth is taken from the temple, in a procession of fabulously decorated elephants, with drummers and torchlights—everything. There is much feasting and joy. You are not a Buddhist, you might not understand how beautiful it all is. Buddhism came to Sri Lanka over 2,300 years ago. The Sacred Tooth is kept in an inner sanctuary of the Maligawa. The flowers are so lovely—frangipani and sapu and jasmine. The Tooth itself rests on a golden lotus under a very old bell casket, really many of them, each fitting on the other, all bejeweled. The ancient kings of Kandy were always independent, you know, here in the mountains. It is a beautiful place. Everything is reflected in the lake, in all the pools for bathing and reflections—”

He interrupted again. “What about the Buddha Stone?” She frowned, her profile shadowed in the evening light. “I don’t think that legend is worth discussing.”

“It’s been mentioned in regard to Ira.”

“Oh, but that is nonsense.” She spoke too quickly, reflecting an inner disturbance that rejected his words. “It is just a myth, an old wives’ tale, I think.”

“I’d like to hear about it,” Durell said.

“Dear Sam, I think George is waking up.”

They reached Kandy as the sun set, plunging the hills into abrupt, tropical darkness. But the city was alive with lights and the thin susurrations of music, the thumping of drums, the low but overwhelming murmur of throngs. They came in on the Peredeniya Road, passing the Botanic Gardens, the flicker of impossible flowers like jewels in the deepening dusk, which settled into the bowl of the surrounding mountains. Beyond the university buildings, the road went almost straight toward the glimmering Kandy Lake, built by the last local king, an islet in the center was once the royal harem. Aspara explained that they had to go through the town in order to reach Ira Sandersons walauwa—one of the old Sinhalese manor houses dating back to the feudal days of kings and pomp and recurrent wars.

eight

“It’s rather broken down, of course, but still quite magnificent,” she said. “The government allowed him to keep quite a few of the antiquities he discovered there, with the

proviso that they were irrevocable national treasures and not personal belongings.”

George spoke up suddenly from the back seat. “Hell, what did you hit me with, spook?”

Durell turned to look at him. “Not with a hammer, for sure. It was my hand.”

“You’re a filthy murderer. Aspara, did you know that Durell probably has killed a dozen men? Maybe more? He’s an imperialist, colonialist lackey, a hired mercenary whom—”

“Be quiet George,” she said calmly. “You are lucky to be alive.”

“Maybe so. Are we in Kandy?”

“It is the Perahera,” she said.

“Bread and circuses for the masses,” the boy complained. “It’s just a hangover from the bad old days, trying to perpetuate the establishment through religious idolatry.” Aspara said sharply, “I will not have you talk like that.” George leaned forward, wincing as he touched his neck. “Mom, you don’t really believe they actually have Buddha’s tooth in the Dalada Maligawa, do you? That’s all right for the peasants, all these elephants and jewelry and torches. But you’re supposed to be a liberated, intelligent Sinhala woman, living in the twentieth century.”

Durell turned on the front seat so he could keep George under observation. He wished again he hadn’t been saddled with such an obvious enemy. At the same time, there was information behind George’s mean eyes, glimpsed now and then through his mane of blowing dark hair. He meant to get that information, sooner or later.

Now that he was in a city, his former feeling of being hunted and pursued returned in double strength. He wondered what had happened to Willie Wells. He had no illusions that Wells was too injured to give up his chase. He would follow orders implacably, and Durell now knew enough about him to totally respect Wells’ abilities. He seemed to see an enemy in every face among the throngs that filled the city’s streets. He reminded himself that there had to be a reason for the Swiss bank account in his name, a reason for the use of a man who looked enough like him to pass at a casual, distant glance. And reason, too, in making him an outlaw, with no refuge anywhere on earth, by senselessly murdering his two men here in Kandy.

Someone wanted him dead, he thought.

Or—

Time stopped for a moment as another angle occurred to him. Someone wanted him outlawed, yes, a target for K Section. Someone wanted him homeless and helpless. Durell drew a deep breath, wished for a cigarette, wished for a drink—

If the purpose of it all was to eliminate him, then the elaborate schemes of depositing money in his name in Geneva and killing his men here so he looked guilty had to have another aim. Given time and patience, it was not difficult to kill a man. No one was immune from assassins.

There was more to it, therefore.

Someone was waiting to take him in, to use him in some way, for something as yet undefined.

Someone wanted him to feel desperate enough to be willing to accept any refuge. Somewhere. Soon. It had to be soon, he thought.

“Sam?”

He felt better. He looked at Aspara. She was more beautiful than ever. They had turned into the Tatinuwara Vidiya, near the Queen’s House, with another glimpse of the royal Kunda Salava, the Pleasure Pavilion, with its tiny drawbridge across the lake. Here in Kandy there was a strong Dravidian influence, exhibited by Hindu temples devoted to Vishnu. But this night in Kandy was completely given over to the celebration of the Sacred Tooth. Flowers were strewn everywhere, and a torchlight procession of coppery Kandyan dancers in white and scarlet held them up for a moment. He watched the crowd even as he glanced at Aspara. If he could hold out against Wells long enough, and avoid the PFM, contact would be made. He was sure of it.

“Dear Sam?”

“Yes,” he said.

“This man you say is looking for you—hunting you? This American—”

“A black,” Durell said. “Very good at the job.”

“A hired killer, you said.”

“In a way.”

“He can’t possibly know you’ve come to Kandy, can he?”

“He can guess. He’s smart and fast, and he’ll be here soon enough—or he’s here already.”

“Perhaps the police—”

“They’re looking for me, too. My two men—”

“What can you hope to had at Ira’s walauwa?”

“I don’t know.”

He felt impatient with the procession that blocked their way. The crowd was thicker, excited, filled with religious fervor that exploded in noise and chanting, in drums and reed flutes. The great gray elephants swayed by, their heads and trunks covered with red and gold and silver, their small eyes visible through ornate holes cut in their face masks. Miniature temples, all jingling silver bells and jeweled tassels and ornaments, moved on their backs, protected by parasols and canopies supported by men and women in white turbans and long white scarves that came forward over their right shoulders. The monks in their saffron robes and priests of the temple in flat red hats and embroidered shawls over their white skirts made a sudden line across the intersection.

Far in the distance, a police siren hooted, coming around the Kiri Muhuda, the rectangular lake called the Milky Sea. In the black waters were reflected the lights from the creamy, octagonal dome of the Delada Maligawa, with its moat and high walls. From all the hillsides around the lake and its wide walk with flowering trees, the houses of the city sent down their own lights, reflecting in the black, silent water.

“Back up,” Durell said suddenly. “Let’s get out of here.”

George snickered.

Aspara said, “I don’t think I can. The crowds—”

George said, “The spook is scared of crowds, huh?” Aspara reversed the big Rolls and slowly backed up a few feet. The people shoved and shouted, swarming 66

around the car to get to the avenue where the elephants lumbered by.

“Sam?”

“Keep going. Is there another way around—?”

“Perhaps. The university grounds—”

Durell said tightly, “Try it.”

She eased the heavy, open car backward through the chanting, shouting crowd. Elephants in velvet, satin, and silk paced by, enormous, silvered and gilded, with dancers on every hand. A block or two behind them, the shops that normally sold everything from mangos to jeweled caskets were tightly shuttered, closed against this night that followed the full moon.

At last Aspara found a side alley, turned the Rolls into it, eased her way down for another block, turned left, found a less crowded street beyond the King’s Pavilion, and accelerated toward the Mahaiyava Railway Station.

A large black car waited for them at the next intersection. Headlights winked on and off. The signal was repeated from another car a block behind them.

Aspara drew a quick breath. “Who can they be?” She touched the brake, and Durell said sharply, “Keep going.” “I can’t. That other car—

“Then stop right here. Right now.”

She slammed on the brakes so hard that George tumbled from the back seat with a yelp. Durell had the door open and was running around the Rolls before it quite stopped. The big car ahead nosed slowly forward, almost blocking the way. Durell could not see through the black windshield to identify anyone in it. Overhead, the full moon shone down on the celebrating city of the Five-Kingdoms-On-The-Hill. From far away, he heard the deep chanting of a processional crowd shouting, “Sadhu! Sadhu!Sadhu!”

He saw the other car moving toward them from behind, down the narrow street Aspara had chosen. He felt a moment of sharp suspicion toward her, then put it aside, jumped in behind the wheel of the Rolls as the girl slid over on the front seat. Then he slammed his foot down on the gas pedal.

The great old car leaped ahead. Aspara made a murmuring sound. The limousine that partially blocked their way was rolling forward to reach the middle of the intersection and leave no room to pass on either side. Durell swung the car to the right, as if he were automatically going to drive on the right-hand side of the street. Ceylonese traffic kept to the left. The limousine was moving that way to block him off. So that driver instinctively obeyed Ceylonese rules. It wouldn’t be Wells. But maybe it was. No way to tell. At the last possible moment, Durell swung the heavy touring car to the left again. There was not enough space to go through. Taillights flared red as the other driver braked. Behind him, the other car came up at a faster speed, only forty feet behind. Headlights blazed in the rear-vision mirror. Something made a sharp ping! along the side of the Rolls. Durell did not see the flicker of gun-flame from the car ahead. Then another bullet whipped the air overhead, and a third cracked the windshield. Aspara ducked and George yelled and stood up and swung one leg over the low rear door and stood on the running board. He waved his free arm and yelled something unintelligible to those in the car ahead. Durell wondered if, in spite of everything, he had managed to inform the PFM. He knew of no way George could have done so. At the same time, the young man apparently expected privileges from those in the cars ahead and behind. But he received none.

There was a lurch, a crash, a pang of regret in Durell at the damage to the old Rolls as they came around the rear end of the big limousine. The car sawed back and forth, skewed half around, smashed into something in the rear, then responded beautifully as he swung the wheel to the right.

He heard Aspara scream George’s name.

George had vanished from the running board.

Durell could not see him in the street behind them. He gave all his attention to handling the heavy car.

“Stop, Sam! They have George! He fell off!”

“No way. Not a chance.”

“But you can’t just leave him here!”

“I have to.”

He saw the shock and dismay, the hostility in her slightly slanted eyes. Her pale brown face was a sudden mask, withdrawn, remote. He glimpsed a road sign, incongruously recalling British hegemony—Lady Horton’s Drive. He swung into it, disregarding Aspara now; she bent forward, a palm pressed to her forehead. Down another side street, there was a flash of bright lights, a glimpse of a Kandyan dance troupe; their bronzed bodies reflected white and scarlet and silver. Then the lake opened out below them, and he heard the thudding of the dancers’ drums recede. Near the Peak View Hotel Aspara said, “Left, now. Please. Be careful.”

The two other cars rocketed doggedly along 3n their dust. The road curved between large private estates, some government buildings, a wooded area, then straightened for a rim uphill toward Katugastota Road and the bridge over the Mahaweli Ganga. The second car behind them vanished, its headlights cut off by intervening trees and houses.

“There is a short cut to the top here. That one will try to beat us,” Aspara said. “Sam, I’m so worried about George.”

“He can take care of himself.”

“I know he’s apt to do you harm, dear Sam; but why does he hate you so?”

“He hates himself really, not me.”

The houses thinned out. The road lifted sharply again, with a ferny, bamboo-grown chasm to the left, and on the right the flickering groves of forest, the sudden iridescent gleam of the eyes of a tiny loris clinging to a branch overhead. Then they were out of the central area of the city.

“We have to go over the bridge,” Aspara murmured. “If the police wait there, we can’t escape.”

But the bridge was not blocked. The second car did not appear to intercept them. The Rolls streaked across the shimmering river, which reflected a full moon over Katugastota, where elephants bathed during the day. Now they were on mountain roads, still climbing out of the bowl in the hills where Kandy nestled, far behind. The limousine clung persistently to their trail, headlights shining now and then around the twisting curves of the road. There was a sense of remoteness in the dark night, a feeling of towering mountains, plunging valleys, terraced tea farms, bamboo thickets, forests trailing weeping vines. The road became rough, bumping around tight curves where no guardrails existed. The road narrowed rapidly as they climbed toward the first summit. Although the Rolls had power to spare, the other car still clung to their trail.

“It won’t do,” Aspara said finally. “We’ll lead them straight to Ira’s walauwa if we keep on.”

Durell spotted a rough trail cut by bullock carts off to the right. At the last moment he twisted the wheel, glimpsed grassland to one side, swung off the rutted path, and whipped the wheel in a circle to come back headed the other way. He doused the lights and let the motor idle. The Rolls engine made a low murmuring sound that allowed the noises of insects in the field to mingle with the quiet rustle of the mountain wind. Moonlight flooded the hillside. To the left was a thick woods; to the right were pastures lifting to a thatched cluster of village houses. No lights showed there. He watched the road.

The headlamps of the other car came on fast. Red flared from the taillights as the driver discovered the cart-track and glimpsed the waiting Rolls. Durell slid out from behind the wheel.

“Get out, Aspara. Hurry. Get away from the car. Lie down in the grass over there, just past that rise.”

She said tightly, “What are you doing to do?”

He gave no reply. He walked forward with his gun hanging loosely from his fingers. The heavy limousine was trying to turn around. He ducked to avoid its headlights. He still did not know how many of his pursuers were in the other car, but he allowed himself some anger now, thinking of the impossible situation in which he’d been placed, knowing that someone was responsible, someone he meant to find and settle accounts with. He did not think Wells was in the limousine. Wells would be much more careful now. He thought he heard another car, the second one, which had vanished back in the city; but he paid no attention to it.

Car doors slammed. Shadows moved among the trees along the bullock path. The full moon of the Perahera gleamed on a small temple set on the other side of the track, about five hundred yards to the east, nestled among tall banyan trees. The place seemed deserted. The moonlight showed him the crumbled flight of steps leading up to the open, broken temple doors, and he moved sidewise in that direction, parallel to the road. He did not look back for Aspara.

There were three of them.

The flat sound of a shot broke the quiet night. A leaf fluttered down over his head. Their intentions were plain. He continued retreating along the cart path, sliding through the thin line of trees toward the deserted temple.

They were eager enough. Two of them came on too fast, exposing themselves on the path. Another shot snapped through a bush just behind him. Durell flattened against the trunk of a tree and leveled his .38 at the nearest running man. He took his time, fired once. The sound of his S&W seemed louder than the others’ shots. The first man on the path tumbled, yelping, and sprawled flat as if diving into a pool. The farther man shouted something in Tamil dialect. Durell was halfway to the temple now. He put on a burst of speed, crossed the path, ran up the opposite bank into the weedy hillside. Bullets whistled after him. At least, he thought, he had drawn them away from Aspara. He was worried about the third man, and hoped that one wouldn’t get the bright idea of going after the girl and using her as a hostage. He didn’t consider what he might do in that case.

At the temple steps he crouched behind the crumbled stone image of a legendary beast. The mountain wind was cool on his face, blowing his thick, black hair. The two others had paused beside the man he had hit, but only briefly. They were more careful now, breaking from shadow to shadow, coming at him.

The steps led up into the open temple doorway. He thought he saw a faint light deep in the recesses of the old temple. The two pursuers had separated to come at him from different sides. He took aim at the nearest, not the leader, and paused at the sound of the second motor car coming up the mountain road. Headlights glared against the full spread of the moonlight, bouncing in the ruts of the bullock path. The wind soughed around the ornate eaves of the little temple. He retreated halfway up the steps, aimed again, fired as the first man came up at him with a rush, yelling violently. He did not miss. The man came on a few more paces, climbed the lowest steps of the temple entrance, then sank down on his knees, clutching his belly.

The second car rocked to a halt beside the limousine. Men tumbled out of it, quick and efficient forms.

“Sir! Mr. Durell?”

He felt a moment of fear- or Aspara. They might recognize the Rolls, know she was nearby, and fan out across the pasture to locate her. He did not think she could evade them for long.

“Durell!"

The voice echoed back and forth from the dark hillside. Durell jumped from the steps into thick brush alongside. Shots slammed from the men in the second car. The last one from the limousine ran in a wild, zigzag pattern down the hill and away from the road. In a moment, he was gone. Durell moved very carefully back toward the road. The second man he had shot was dead. The newcomers were gathered about the first one. He listened to his name being called for a third time and tried to identify the voice, aware of its familiarity, and then he swore softly and walked out into sight on the path, letting his gun dangle from his hand at his side.

“Mr. Dhapura?” he called.

“Of course. Sir, are you safe?”

“Safe enough. Get Madame Aspara, please.”

“Naturally. A pleasure. I was so worried we might be too late. We had an eye on you all the time, but you drove so well, and so deviously, I might add, that I thought for a time we had lost you and the PFMs might have their way with you.”

There was a note of authority in the Sinhalese that had not been present in Colombo. They met on the path, and Mr. Dhapura formally shook his hand, smiled apologetically, and waved to the three men who had arrived with him.

“My people, sir. All very good men.”

Durell said, “It was you who told the cops at the roadblocks up here that we were to be allowed through?” “Naturally, sir.”

“You know now where I spent the last poya day?”

“I know, and I have forgotten it. I will be most discreet, sir. Sir, Madame Aspara is safe. She will be here in a moment. I will pretend to know nothing. She is a great lady, and I would not embarrass her. One must be sophisticated, to say the least, in such delicate matters. But since I learned you could not possibly have been in Kandy when your two men were killed, I thought I would lend you assistance.”

Durell wondered why Mr. Dhapura was always so verbose. He said, “And your true rank, Mr. Dhapura?”

The Sinhalese said, “I am a major in the Ceylon counterintelligence, the DS-7 department. Are you angry about it?”

“You are supposed to be working for us.”

The man bowed slightly. “In our profession, sir, one must expect—ah—deception. I am ashamed of it. Of course, the salary that K Section paid me to maintain my listening post as manager of the Royal Lanka Hotel has been carefully accounted for and will be returned in due time.”

“So you were a double agent,” Durell said.

“Ah. Sir, you are angry.”

“Not at all. I’m glad you’ll be along.”

Dhapura shook his head. “My excuses, sir. I will not go on with you. The walauwa of Ira Sanderson is not far from here. We will be unseen and unheard, if you are willing to go on as a lamb for bait, when the tiger appears. You may count on me, sir. My curiosity as to what has been happening to you truly consumes me. Do you mind?” Durell watched Aspara being escorted up the hillside from her hiding place. Dhapura’s men were most solicitous. He waved a hand at the wounded man and the dead man on the road.

“What about them?”

“PFM terrorists. Murderers. You will not be troubled by the affair here.”

“My thanks. So you want me to go on?”

“Please do. As I say, we will be on hand—unseen, but present to assist you. I am honored to cooperate with you. Your name has not been unknown in the DS-7 department.”

Durell said, “Somebody in my department obviously slipped up about you.”

“Please. Madame Aspara is waiting.”

Durell walked away toward the waiting woman.

nine

Aspara drove again, returning part way along the mountain road; then she took a more clearly defined highway that followed a valley, then climbed another slope. The Rolls purred along smoothly. The woman’s face was a pale mask in the moonlight. Durell looked at his watch. He was surprised to find it was not yet ten o’clock.

“Did you ask that man about George?” she inquired.

“No.”

“But you realize I am concerned about my son.”

“George is all right. He’s where he wants to be—with his friends of the PFM. He’s young and a revolutionary like most of the young the world over. He’s just doing his thing. As long as he hasn’t harmed us, we can forget about him.”

“Perhaps you can forget. I cannot.”

“I’m sorry, Aspara.”

“I have never seen or thought about you in the way I saw you act tonight. You killed two men, and you simply forget about it?”

“Only one,” Durell said.

“It does not trouble you?”

“It troubles me.”

“I find that difficult to believe.”

“Aspara—”

She said abruptly, “We are here.”

The walauwa was one of the few remaining medieval manor houses going back to the old kingdoms of Kandy. It sat graciously on a terrace cut into the mountainside, and below it in the moonlight were tea terraces, some rubber, and two small villages which lay in the valley along the silvery ribbon of a stream that flowed from the rectangular irrigation tank built at a higher level along the mountain. The house itself, touched with kindness by the night shadows and the moon, looked aristocratic and delicate, but it reflected the strength of the feudal lords who had lived here long ago and ruled the domains below.

One wing of the manor had crumbled, and the white blocks of stones were heaped in a high pile of carved masonry, spilling over the low wall that surrounded the estate. The wind bent the tall trees slightly. The garden was unkempt, gone wild from years of neglect, although flowers still bloomed in the tangled shrubs, vines, and creepers massed on either side of the crushed-stone entrance drive. “Shall I go all the way in?” Aspara asked coolly.

“Stop here. We’ll walk. It might be best if you waited in the car again.”

“No, I’ll feel safer with you—even if you are a murderer. I’m sorry—I’m confused about you.” She said it simply, and her manner remained distant. “I have not known any violent men before. Ceylon is a peaceful land. True, Sri Lanka was cursed with its share of wars, but the Sinhala people want only peace.” She paused, looked at the wide sweep of the walauwa. “Ira and I lived here for almost two years, you know, when we were first married. George was bom here. George—”

“I’m sorry I got you involved,” he said.

“I am not. Not about you and what is happening. It is my duty to know what goes on in my country.”

“Is that why you’re with me in this?”

She said quietly, “I thought I was falling in love with you again.”

“Don’t,” he told her.

“You need not worry. I know I would only be a burden to a man like you. Your world is not mine. But I was beginning to dream a little.”

Durell eyed the black, rectangular windows of the manor house- and considered the open, double-leafed doorway that seemed to invite them in. Insects hummed and clicked in the unkempt brush nearby. Somewhere a night bird called out on a querulous note.

“It seems empty,” Aspara murmured.

“Nothing is what it seems to be. Mr. Dhapura is a case in point. I think he’s somewhere about, behind us.”

He went up the steps, paused near the yawning black doorway, returned, and asked Aspara for a flashlight. She had a torch in the square, big trunk of the Rolls. He took it and returned to the door and stepped inside.

No one leaped, shouted, or attacked him.

He waited, pulling Aspara in against the wall beside the door, in a central hallway where moonlight sent fingers of silver down through broken tiles in the high roof. Her fingers were cool in his, but trembling a little.

“It’s been so long .. . I have so many memories . . .

“The past is dead,” Durell said.

King and Thompson had died here, a bullet for each in the back of the head. The place had been an unexpected trap when they came to conduct a routine check on this old mansion where Ira Sanderson escaped his diplomatic duties to conduct the archeological explorations that were his true interests. He drew a deep breath and snapped on the big flashlight. Its beam shot out like a soundless explosion touching dusty marble stairs, wide doors opening to right and left, dusty furniture of antique Kandyan style.

There was no reaction from anyone.

He moved forward silently with Aspara, knowing that if anyone was here, that person was expecting him. It was a chance he had to take. He had no crew of experts from K Section to go in and take this place apart.

The rooms to the right were like museum pieces, filled with court chairs of gilt and mahogany, low tables of both Moorish and Sinhala design, crumbled fragments dug up out of jungle cave-fortresses. He looked for Sanderson’s living quarters. There was a kitchen in the back, with charcoal and oil stoves, a modem table, a gas-run refrigerator. The box had stopped, the fuel emptied, and there were only scraps of food left inside. At least Ira hadn’t expected to be kidnapped. The photographs of the missing man that Durell had seen had shown Sanderson to be tall, stooped, with rather weak eyes, horn-rimmed glasses, and thinning blond hair that was probably more gray than blond. He was still addicted to Ivy League suits, narrow charcoal-gray neckties, a habit of stooping and peering at people less tall than he.

But there was nothing personal of the man downstairs. Durell moved up the broad stone stairs. Aspara’s footsteps were swift whispers as she tried to keep up with his long pace.

“Ira’s bedroom-workshop was up here,” she whispered.

He touched her mouth. “Don’t speak.”

“But no one is here—”

“Wrong,” he said.

He could feel it, that indefinable sense of someone’s presence, somewhere in this ancient house, in the shadows, waiting. He wondered if it was Willie Wells. Aspara gestured to the right, and he moved swiftly and silently down the hall.

A large room, which had once seen medieval dancers perform for the lord of the manor, was directly above the main entrance below. He flicked off the torch. Moonlight came through tall, filigreed windows. He waited a moment for his eyes to adjust to the pale light. There was a work table strewn with artifacts of stone and bronze, broken pieces of old statues, tools, a microscope, fine brushes, sorting bins, glue, the smell of age-old antiquities. He could see a rumpled bed to the right, where Ira Sanderson had risen one morning a few days ago, and met his kidnappers.

To the left was a small scatter of furniture, new and old, and under an arched doorway leading to another room, was a massive old throne, a regal chair supported by four small trumpeting elephants carved of ivory, with a ragged, faded parasol and canopy above its high, carved back.

The man who sat in the chair smiled and raised his Russian handgun and said, “Ho, Comrade Cajun. Hello, Madame Aspara. I have been waiting for you.”

ten

Durell said, “Put away the gun, Cesar.”

Colonel Cesar Skoll, of the KGB in Moscow, nodded his shaven head. “A moment. Do not shoot, please, old friend.”

“We’re not friends,” Durell said. “Do it now.”

“As you wish.” The big Siberian carefully put his weapon aside. “But I may still have to kill you, Comrade Cajun.”

“Everybody wants to kill me,” Durell said.

“You are not surprised to find me here?”

“Nothing surprises me any more.”

“Ho. True. We have been in the business too long, old friend. And now you are out of it.”

The Russian was enormous, like a Siberian bear, whose habitat was the frozen, icy wasteland that had bred this man. Skoll had a shaven head and slanted eyes that were pale, pale blue, almost white in the uncertain moonlight; his massive body suggested incredible strength and speed.

He wore climbing boots, tucked into the legs of a baggy gray jumpsuit.

“Who else is here?” Durell asked.

“Only myself, tovarich.”

“How did you get here?”

“I walked.”

Durell wondered about Mr. Dhapura. “From Kandy?”

“Once, when I was a boy in Siberia, where I lived in a lumber camp, I was with all the grown men in the forest, and when a sudden snowstorm came, they packed up and got into their trucks and drove off, back to the base. They forgot me.” Skoll’s stomach rumbled, and he belched and waved a massive paw. “Forgive me, dear lady. There is no vodka in this house, and I drank some disagreeable English whiskey. For that night and the next day, in Siberia, I walked through the storm, which turned to ice very soon, and I kept on walking, for if I stopped, I would be a very dead lad, very quickly. I made it back to the base camp— obviously.”

“And why are you here, in the middle of Ceylon?” Durell asked.

“My old friend and competitor, I was looking for you and Andrei Kubischev. That bastard.” Skoll waved his big hand again. “Forgive me once more, dear Madame Aspara.”

“And why are you looking for me?” Durell demanded.

“You defected from K Section. Kubischev has also defected from the KGB. He was one of my most trusted men—as I am sure you were once considered, by your General McFee. I was embarrassed. I am enraged. I feel to find him and kill him. And I traced him this far, and no farther.”

Durell stared at the man on the ancient Lanka throne. The house was quiet. Outside, crickets fiddled in the tall weeds. He truly felt beyond surprise. Through his years of walking the lonely paths of the world, watching every corner, every face, he had crossed Colonel Skoll several times, in the Moroccan desert and in Japan, on Malta and in Malaysia. It was difficult to say which had scored the most in this silent war for information, a war where no medals were handed out for success. He knew—and Skoll knew—about the red tab on his dossier in KGB headquarters. One day, he supposed, one or the other might be forced to kill. He did not want to be the victim. He remained careful. Survival went to the quick and the cautious in this business.

He said suddenly, “Cesar, does your man Kubischev look like me?”

Skoll scowled. “No. Yes. In a general way. Yes, one might say so.”

Durell said, “I’d like to find him too.”

Very carefully, the Russian leaned forward on the big chair. The old ivory elephants that served as feet creaked under his massive weight. Skoll’s pale eyes gleamed white as Siberian ice in the tropical moonlight.

“Now. May I ask you why?”

“He’s working for somebody. I don’t know who it is, but it’s the somebody who used Kubischev to frame me.” “Ho!”

“Do you think your man is in Sri Lanka?”

“I am sure of it,” Skoll said.

“And who did he defect to?”

Skoll said, “Cajun, my comrade,  you puzzle me. Either you are very good at lying, which of course you are, or you are in a very disastrous situation. I was hoping you could lead me to Kubischev—and thence to Sanderson and the group that seems to be stealing the best minds and best men in the intelligence business. The KGB is not alone in its loss. The Polish, British, even the Peking Black House, have men who vanished, who are working for someone else. I should have known better.” Skoll’s rumbling voice was rueful. “I should have known you are not a man who can be bought.”

Durell said, “My boss in Washington ought to know that too. You’ve been sent after Kubischev. I have a man on my trail too, a former mercenary, a black named Wells.” The Russian nodded. “I have heard of him. You have a problem.”

Skoll got up from the thronelike chair, picked up his gun, and put it away, looking at Aspara with some curiosity. The Sinhala woman had not said a word. Now her large, liquid eyes swung from Durell to the Russian and back again.

“Dear Sam, have I misjudged you?”

“No matter.”

“You are both trained killers, are you not? That is your function?”

“Only incidentally. Our primary job is to get data, facts. The world in its rivalry depends on it.”

“True,” Skoll grumbled.

“And all this takes place in my country?”

Durell said, “We’ll find the reason for it.”

“Ho,” said Skoll. “You assume we are comrades now?” Durell said, “You know the usual terms, Cesar.”

“Yes. Yes I know you, Cajun. We worked together before, against that Madame Hung’s private organization. That dreadful, evil woman. And then, in Malta, you cheated me of all the fruits of that labor. Did you know that Hung is active again? Did you?”

Durell stared. “She’s dead. We were both there when she was killed. She’s dead.”

“No.”

“Dead,” Durell repeated. He felt suddenly chilly, as if something that was much colder than the mountain wind had blown through the filigreed windows of the walauwa. Based in Singapore, and with a network like a dozen spider webs throughout the world, the Hung outfit had peddled information to the highest bidder, some of it false, some tainted—fishing in the troubled waters of a difficult world, often creating crises to suit its purpose. He had no wish to think of the woman, Madame Hung, ever.

Skoll said, “Yes, dead. I agree. But her people and her work still live, my Cajun.”

“We smashed her outfit.”

“Not all of it. And someone is picking up the pieces. Buying men. The best men, because Kubischev was one of my best, and you are one of the best too. Buying data, using computers, with a headquarters somewhere—” Skoll waved his paw—somewhere near here.”

Aspara’s breath made a whispering sound. “I find it difficult to accept the things you men talk about. If you are enemies—rivals—you do not behave as such. You speak of troublemakers in this world, of a private spy network? I cannot accept it.”

Skoll grinned. “Dear lady, read the newspapers. Are the hijackings, the ransom demands, the senseless massacres unbelievable? Yes. What is so difficult to accept that a man—or woman—with money and a desire to manipulate world events out of megalomania, perhaps—cannot do what we discuss?”

Durell said, “Do you know his name?”

“I think I know it.” Scholl belched again. “I have always believed that English whiskey is abominable. But I feel a need for something, and in the absence of vodka—” Skoll’s heavy brows went up, pretending surprise. “You still hold your gun, Comrade Cajun? Please, Put it away. In the presence of your lady, there will be no difficulties between us.”

Aspara started out of the big, moonlit room, then moved quietly to the table littered with Sanderson’s archeological finds. Her slim fingers touched this piece and that, returned to a small sculptured head, gently traced the eroded stone. She frowned. Her figure was limned in the pale light that came through the tall, narrow windows. Her face was bathed in shadow.

“These are new,” she said. “Entirely new.”

“Or entirely old,” Skoll rumbled.

Durell simply watched her.

“I do not know where these could have come from,” she said. “Through Ira, I learned some rather little-known facts about my own country and the Kandyan kingdoms. I know about our new hydroelectric dam at Maskeliya, about the finds near Laxapana Falls, about the nature preserves, the new highways, the development of railroads. These are new, these things here. Very old, I mean. Older than the remains that go back to the fourteenth century at Gangasiripura, which is now called Gampola. In the sixteenth century, when the Portuguese tried to penetrate these mountains of my blessed Lanka, this city of Kande Uda Nuwara became the capital city of Wimala Dharma Suriya I. We have enough remains from all that. But these are pre-Dravidian things, I think. From far back before the Princess Nayakar from South India. Far, far back.” She spoke softly, as if to herself. “These things are not mentioned in the Mahavamsa, our Buddhist Chronicle. Where did Ira find them?”

“Can you guess?” Durell asked.

He went to the table. He did not allow Skoll to slip from his sight. There were scattered scraps of paper, scrawled notes, held down by stones and pieces of relics. The writing was an illegible scribble.

“Can you read any of these notes?” he said.

She was reluctant, fingering several scraps. She held them up to the moonlight and shook her head. “It is not possible. There were very few finds out in this place he has indicated.”

“Where?” Durell asked.

“Beyond Matale. Due north of here, past Rattota. A district called Naradara. A very old name. It is a rather wild and undeveloped place. It was once the kingdom of a Tamil named Kirtilaka. Long, long ago, there was a Buddhist princess, Naradara Sinha, a Sinhalese ruler. It is mostly legendary. It has not been thoroughly explored, archeologically. But maybe Ira was looking for things up there. It is small wonder he was kidnapped by the PFM. There was fighting in those mountains, some time ago. The government troops stumbled on a PFM base camp, all sorts of bunkers and caves. They sent planes to bomb them out. One of the old tanks—reservoirs—was destroyed, I remember; the dike burst, and the valley flooded.”

She stopped talking suddenly. Then she said quietly, “Ira and I went our separate ways after the divorce. I never thought he was very talented in his hobby. But he has found something. Yes, yes, something very nice, very interesting, something—I do not know what.”

“The Buddha Stone?’ Durell suggested.

She turned angrily, her dark eyes flashing, first to him, then to the big Russian who watched and listened.

“There is no such thing. The Sacred Tooth relic, yes. The legend that Buddha actually visited Lanka, yes. But that there is a stone on which he wrote words of marvel, no. No, no. One must not believe such a thing. It would be—" She paused, dismissed the relics on the table with a wave of her slim hand. “These are merely very old. Come Mr. Skoll. Or is it Colonel? Whichever you prefer. I thini I can find your whiskey.”

“I think I am not as interested in whiskey as I was,’’ said Skoll. “Have you heard of Dr. K.V. Mouqueram Sinn?”

Her head came up. “More nonsense. There is no suet man.”

“The Naga—the Cobra’s Bow—takes orders from him. He in truth rules the PFM.”

“Nonsense,” she said again.

But Durell was not so sure.

Someone was moving down on the lower floor of the walauwa.

eleven

“Stay here,” Durell said to Aspara.

“No. Let me see what you are, once more.”

“You may be hurt.”

“I’m not afraid.”

Skoll caught his eye, nodded, took out his gun, moved with him out of the big room, paused, waved a hand upward. Durell came forward and slid sidewise toward the head of the broad staircase. Shafts of moonlight fell around him like javelins hurled through the broken roof tiles. Skoll moved with surprising speed, slipping to the other side of the stairs. Shadows dappled his flat Siberian face. His eyes gleamed. Durell heard Aspara behind him, put his hand backward, held her against the wall.

There came another soft footfall from below, the thin screak of a door being opened. Durell moved his head downward, and he and Skoll went leaping down the steps, two and three at a time. He wondered if it was Major Dhapura down there; but he didn’t think the Sinhalese cop would be so careless.

Skoll held out an arm like a log barrier.

“There.” The word was hardly a sound. The Russian nodded to a door in the rear. “The kitchen. English whiskey.”

“You first,” Durell said.

“You do not trust me, Comrade Cajun?”

“Not now. Not ever.”

“Perhaps I should go around the back?”

“You first. Where I can see you.”

“You are a hard man.”

Skoll moved fast on the far side of the wide hall toward the door, hit the paneling with massive force, burst inside. Durell was close beside him. Something moved, fl?shing toward an outside door that stood open against the night. The white of a ragged turban gleamed in the darkness; a slim brown torso, white trousers sawed off at the knees, the slap of bare feet on the stone floor. Something crashed, spilled onto the tiling. A long knife like a machete slashed the air. Skoll grunted, caught the man’s arm, twisted. The turbaned man slashed again, wriggling like an eel, broke free, and Durell hit him, hit him again, drove the frantic man to his knees across the outer door sill.

Skoll sighed. “Thank you, Cajun.”

“Did he cut you?”

“A little.”

“Anyone else around?”

“I think not.”

Durell stepped over the man and walked a few paces outside. The overgrown garden made an impenetrable wall ahead. There was nothing to be seen. He turned back. Skoll had flipped the man over so that his face was upward. It was a brown, flat face, the dark eyes resentful and sullen.

“He is a PFM,” Skoll muttered.

“Paid by your people?” Durell asked.

“Not by me. Perhaps Peking. Perhaps—Dr. Sinn.” “What about Dr. Sinn?”

The man’s eyes flickered as he heard Durell repeat the name. He tried to spit up into Skoll’s face. The Russian slapped him, knocked his head aside, and said, “You. Tell us what you are doing here.”

The response was a blank look, as if the man did not understand English. Skoll tried Russian, then clumsy Sinhalese. The man suddenly spoke in English, after all. "I was sent—to tell you—the Cobra’s Bow will see you. Very soon. You must be prepared. It is your only hope, Durell.”

Skoll said, “I am not Durell. This man is. Why does your Naga wish to see him? Come, you understand me. Don pretend. Tell us why.”

“I—cannot.”

“Then we will kill you,” Skoll said calmly.

The man was not afraid. He tried to get up, and Skoll pushed him back with his foot. The man said again, "I was sent—to tell you—the Cobra’s Bow will see you. Very soon. You must—”

“He’s repeating it from memory,” Durell said.

“Perhaps. Then he can tell us nothing more. What shall we do w:th him, Comrade Cajun?”

“Let him go,” Durell said. “He can’t hurt us.”

As he spoke, Durell suddenly felt as if something had punched him lightly in the shoulder. Even before the burning pain seared his skin, he heard the low, muffled crack of a high-powered rifle with a muzzle silencer. He fell away, bumped backward against the kitchen table, crunched through the glass the PFM had broken. Skoll rumbled something, and the PFM scrambled on all fours and scuttled like a giant spider out the door, tumbling to the weedy ground. Skoll shouted, and Dure!l fell against the wall, straightened, came up beside the doorway. The PFM man was gone. Moonlight showed the wall of brush, the slope of the hill rising from the road that had led them to the walauwa.

“Sam?” It was Aspara, calling to him.

“Stay back!”

“Are you all right?”

“Yes.”

Skoll said, “Who winged you?”

“It has to be Wells. He’s out there somewhere. He must have stayed on my trail through Kandy. He’ll never give up.”

In the dim light, Skoll’s grin was a death mask. “It is only a passing thought, but I could endear myself to your K Section by turning you in, nyet?”

“You could try it.”

“And perhaps receive a bonus, also, from my own people in Moscow, am I right?”

“I’m sure of it.” Durell kept watching the door and the hillside out there. Nothing moved. He couldn’t spot the sniper.

Skoll said, “And still, I believe you. You did not sell out to Mouquerana Sinn, did you?”

“I never heard his name before.”

“But my man, Andrei Kubischev, did. He helped to frame you, yes?”

“Da,” Durell said grimly.

“I hate to see an old friend like you in such trouble, Comrade Cajun.”

“Shut up and look for him,” Durell said.

“I already see him. Over there. Coming down the hill. He has courage, that black man. Very determined, eh'/ He knows he hit you. Is it bad?”

“Only a scratch. Where?”

“There. The moon on his rifle. See?”

Durell caught the glint of light on the long barrel. It was like a spark of liquid silver, flickering through the trees beyond the weedy walauwa garden. Wells was coming down fast, but very carefully, moving from cover to cover, bounding, sliding, vanishing and then reappearing for a split second.

Skoll grunted. “Shall we finish him?”

“No.”

“But he will kill you, if he can.”

“He’s operating under mistaken orders. I didn’t sell out to anybody, but he doesn’t know that. It’s not his fault. I’m not being generous—just practical. Wells is a very good man.”

“How can you, stop him?”

Durell moved out of the doorway and ducked into the deep shadow of the brush surrounding the house. His .38 was relatively impotent against the sniper’s rifle at this distance. He looked to the right and left. Behind him, Skoll hid in the doorway, watching. The stone driveway, weedy

and gullied by rain, swept around this side of the house, presumably to a former service entrance. But the Rolls was around in the front, in plain sight, perhaps sixty feet beyond the terraced corner of the house. V ells had vanished. He searched the hillside, heard Skoll whistle softly. “What is it?”

“Madame Aspara says she will get the car.”

“No. It’s too risky.”

“She says she will try it.”

“You do it, Cesar.”

“You need me to cover you.”

“I’m all right. Go ahead.”

He felt better now, better than in Colombo, when he had been completely in the dark. He had several threads now—if he could keep alive to follow them. Again he wondered about Dhapura. He did nof think the Sinhalese cop had lost him; but he was holding back, and he did not know why. Perhaps it was just as well. He didn’t want official interference here.

He turned his head. Skoll was gone from the doorway. When he looked back, he saw Wells, a dark shape in the shadows of the trees above, standing spread-legged, the rifle up. He heard the shot and threw himself sidewise, heard the bullet spatter on the stone wall, heard a second and third shot, then scrambled forward to the brush, lay flit, breathing quietly. Wells was smart enough not to offer himself as a target. He felt as if he were handcuffed, not wanting to kill the man uselessly, not wanting to die himself either.

He heard the throb of the Rolls engine, quickly quieting after it started. A cricket shrilled under him as he crouched in the brush across the driveway. When the Rolls nosed around the corner of the walauwa, outlined in silver in the moonlight, he lifted himself and scrambled up the brushy hillside away from the house. He heard Skoll’s muffled curse, then he put all his energy into the swift climb, circling high above the spot where he had last seen Wells in the moonlight.

You can’t run forever, he thought. He had to put a stop to it now, if possible:

He moved silently, carried back for a moment to his boyhood days in Bayou Peche Rouge, in Louisiana, where he’d hunted so often with his old Grandpa Jonathan. When he felt he had circled higher than Wells, he turned and looked back. The Rolls was stopped before the service door of the manor. Nothing moved there. He could not see Aspara or Skoll. He wondered briefly if he could trust the Russian. They had worked together at other times in a mutually advantageous truce. Maybe this would be another such occasion. He did not know. He kept his gun ready and began his descent.

Halfway down, he spotted his quarry.

Wells was crouched in the deep shadow of a tall, feathery tree, laced with night-blooming vines, in a small clearing dappled by moonlight. The black man held the rifle in his left hand, and Durell could see its powerful scope, the long, specialized scope, a variation created by the gimmick boys of K Section’s l"b down in the basement at No. 20 Annapolis Street in Washington. It was a deadly assassin’s tool. The man’s face was turned toward the driveway and the parked Rolls.

Then Aspara came out of the back door of the walauwa, and Wells straightened smoothly, shifted the rifle to his right hand as Skoll came out too, his bald head bent toward the graceful figure of the woman.

Durell came down the hill swiftly, silently, rushing from shadow to shadow. Wells was alone. There was nothing to indicate he had any assistants.

At the last moment, Wells heard him, spinning like a lithe panther, his teeth flashing in a taut grin. Durell hit him hard, tumbled him backward, slammed the muzzle of his .38 hard under the other’s jaw, snapping his head back painfully.

“Hold it. Keep quiet.”

For an instant Wells struggled, his powerful body heaving under Durell. Then he suddenly went slack as he looked into Durell’s eyes and dropped the rifle into the tall grass.

“All right, Sam.”

“Take it easy or your head gets blown off.”

“Yes. You’d do it too.” Wells’ grin was taut, stretching his mouth. “You might as well kill me now, Cajun. I won’t give up.”

“I just want to tell you,” Durell said, “that your order; are based on an error in Washington. I have not defected Repeat, not. Can you contact McFee?”

“Not right here, old man. Not right now.”

“When you can, then. Ask them to check on someone named Dr. Mouquerana Sinn. He’s taken over Madame Hung’s apparatus, he’s grabbing off picked men fron every intelligence outfit in the world.”

“Nuts.”

“And he’s trying to take me over too. Got that?”

“Hung is dead. You killed her yourself.”

“Not quite. We didn’t get all of her outfit either. This new man is collecting the pieces. He wants money. Tel Washington I’m authorizing the payment of the ransom for Ira Sanderson. I may get him out of it, maybe not.” “You know where he is?”

“I’m getting ideas.”

“You’re also crushing my larynx,” Wells said. “Ease up on your gun, huh?”

Durell only pressed the muzzle of his .38 harder unde] the black man’s jaw. He couldn’t read anything in Wells dark eyes. Then he withdrew a little and suddenly moved back, rising to his feet. Wells lay with his arms outstretched, his long figure quiet in the shadows of the vine-grown tree. Durell picked up the man’s rifle. He was sure that Wells had other weapons, but it was a poor time to try to search the man’s dark clothing for knives or small handguns.

“Get up,” he said quietly.

Wells slowly rose to his feet, rubbing his throat. “What was the name again?”

“Dr. Mouquerana Sinn.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“The next time you come after me, if you haven’t checked it out, you’re a dead man, Willie.”

“I won’t miss, next time.”

“One other thing: a Russian KGB man named Andre: Kubischev. He’s reported missing, a defector like me. And he looks something like me, generally. Have the analysis people check the dossiers. We’ll have something on him.” Wells watched Aspara and Skoll, down below. “Is she your woman?”

“She’s a Sinhalese politician. She’s curious about what goes on in her own country.”

“Did you tell her much?”

“She’s intelligent. She can put two and two together.” Wells nodded. “I’ll think about it—-but I still believe you’re a bastard who sold out. I’ve sold my own services for money many times since I left Vietnam, but I never welshed on a contract or crossed the paymaster.”

“Start walking,” Durell said.

“Sure. But I won’t ever be far behind you, Cajun.”

Durell watched the man slowly climb the hill and vanish into the deep shadow of the woods above the walauwa. From up here. he could see the glint of moonlit water on the artificial tanks dotting the mountainous countryside. The sky held the glow of light from Kandy, far in the distance.

“Comrade Cajun?"

It was Skoll’s voice, deep and rumbling, seeking him. “I’m coming,” Durell said quietly.

twelve

The full moon set behind the western mountains shortly after midnight. They had gone through Matale into a thinly populated district of forested mountains, scattered tea and rubber plantations, gleaming reservoirs built by kings long dead. Here and there in the tangled vegetation of the valleys were ruins attesting to ancient glories of kings who built temples and palaces, now forgotten or ignored. The lights of the Rolls briefly touched on a startled herd oi white deer, who bounded away immediately, leaving Durell to wonder if it had been an illusion.

The road was rough as they climbed farther beyond the small town of Rattota and turned east again. None of them had eaten, but Aspara had several flasks of water in a kit in the back of the Rolls, and it eased their thirst. When Durell was finally certain they had lost all pursuit, he said, “Stop at the first clearing we come to, Aspara.”

She was driving carefully, showing little fatigue. “Why here? This is truly nowhere, dear Sam.”

They crossed a flimsy bridge that creaked under the weight of the car. Under them, a small gorge held a rushing stream that was buried in the darkness.

“Right here,” he said. “Skoll?”

“Yes, Comrade Cajun.”

“We’ll all get out.”

“As you say,” the Russian rumbled. “You wish to have a long talk, I think. Heart to heart, eh? Out of the car, where you can watch us both.”

“That’s right.”

Near the rutted road that lifted into abandoned rubber plantations, a ruined devala, a Tamil temple dedicated to the Hindu Vishnu, made rectangular, broken angles against the star-swept sky. The mountain wind felt cold, and Aspara shivered against him. Her shadowed face and dark eyes were enigmatic as he indicated that they walk toward the devala.

“This land is haunted,” she murmured. “Some of the PFM bands used to hide around here, until the government troops used tanks and planes to chase them away. But it may still be dangerous.”

Durell took out his gun.

Aspara said, “Why do you point that at me, dear Sam?” “I want some answers. From you and Colonel Skoll. If I don’t get them, I’ll leave you both here to find your way back on foot. It may take a couple of days, and by then I’ll have gone on alone. The choice is yours.”

Aspara shivered violently. “I am a Buddhist, not a Hindu. Must we stop at this temple?”

“You haven’t been quite honest with me, Aspara.”

“But I offered to help. You abandoned my son—I’ve been worrying and worrying about him—”

“Never mind George. I have the feeling he’ll show up again. Sit down. You too, Skoll.”

The Russian sighed. “I am hungry. But I sit, as you command.” He laughed thickly. “I know what you wish to ask. You ask it at the point of a gun. That is no way for two comrades, both of us in trouble, to cooperate.”

“It seems the only way. So tell me about your man who defected to this Dr. Sinn. Tell me about Sinn, everything you know about him, and what he’s doing with the remains of Hung’s organization.”

“Ah. Hung?” The big Russian shrugged, fumbled in £ pocket for a cigarette, started to light it, then kept turning it over and over in his thick fingers. “That woman still gives me nightmares. She alone could have destroyed the world, the way she manufactured crises between our nations in order to profit by selling false data to you, to Moscow, to Peking. Her network was fragmented, after we beat her at Malta. But many of her people escaped our nets, eh? Petty chiefs of intelligence. Now someone has gathered them up and recruited new aides to carry on that dirty business.”

“It’s your Dr. Mouquerana Sinn.”

“Yes. So I think. One cannot be certain yet. He is only a name to me. But he has much money. He kidnapped your Ira Sanderson and demands half a million in cast and a plane to escape from Ceylon. What has your embassy done about the ransom demands?”

“They’re waiting for word from me or Washington.” “But the time limit is up at dawn today, eh?”

“What else do you know about this man Sinn?”

“Very little.” The Russian grinned. “In your beautiful car, Madame Aspara, you have a little liquor cabinet? Perhaps a bit of vodka? I starve for it. It would be helpful to persuade this American that I am not his enemy, because I no longer believe he sold himself to this Mouquerana Sinn.”

Aspara spread her delicate hands. “I am sorry.”

“No matter.” Skoll turned his broad face toward Durell “I have little information to give you. The PFM takes his orders, we know that. Where he comes from, who he is what nation or race bred him, we do not know. He may be Portuguese, Tamil, Sinhala. Perhaps some Chinese, 1 cannot say. But very brilliant, I think. Too brilliant for my poor, dry mind to cope with now.”

Durell looked at the bridge, the parked Rolls, and listened to the rush of water far below. The hills were silent around them. He said, “Aspara, I need your help too.”

“I am here,” she said, “only because this is my country my beautiful Sri Lanka, my struggling nation. You and Colonel Skoll intrude on us here with your world rivalries—"

“Not so,” Skoll said. “We have a common enemy in this man we seek. He has stolen some of my people, including this Kubischev, whom I trusted with my heart, who betrayed me, who has caused certain important people in Moscow to suspect me too. In a way, I am as desperate as Comrade Cajun to solve this riddle of Dr. Sinn. We have no aims against Ceylon.”

“I am not certain of that,” she said. In the starlight, she seemed more beautiful than ever, despite her fatigue and remote manner. “What can I tell you, dear Sam? I have seen a side of you that I only suspected and never quite believed. You can kill. You can abandon my son. I wish I had never become involved, and yet it is my duty. So I am here. And you would leave me in these desolate mountains, if I do not assist you.”

“I don’t want to do that,” Durell said. “I saw those artifacts that Ira had on his table at the walauwa. They are not insignificant. And your government must have had a hint of what he was doing and where he was digging.”

“Yes. Near here, not many months ago, as I said, a band of terrorists were surprised by our police and wiped out. But there was some bombing, and an ancient tank was destroyed and the reservoir ran out and flooded a small valley. When tilings were pacified, Ira came here to dig, and in the hillside that was exposed, he found certain caves where very, very old things had been hidden for centuries. Perhaps for over two thousand years. He was still digging when the PFM came back there and took him, we understand, for ransom.”

She paused. “It is a very old place, a place of old kingdoms. It goes too far back to contemplate.”

“To the time of Buddha’s visit to Lanka?”

“Perhaps. I do not know.”

“And do you think Ira found this mythical Buddha Stone? Tell me, Aspara. This time I don’t want you to hold anything back.”

“It is an old secret,” she whispered. “Perhaps only a peasant’s tale. You know of our Adam’s Peak, the mountain that is believed to be the place where Adam, fleeing from the Garden of Eden, was permitted to rest and stay? It is sacred to Hindus, Moslems, even to Buddhists.”

Skoll said, “But that place is far to the south of Kandy. We are north now.”

“Yes, of course. It is said, however, that at the time of Buddha’s visit to Lanka, his sacred spirit moved him to dictate certain precepts that he had come to accept in regard to man’s behavior in this universe. It was never found, naturally, but the peasants believe it to this day, they believe that a scribe wrote these dictates of Buddha on a stone, carving them for eternity. It was lost, they say, far over a thousand years ago. But—” Aspara shook her head“—it cannot be accepted.”

“Why not?” Skoll asked.

“Can you imagine what would happen to that part of humanity that believes in Buddha? For countless generations, a whole concept of religion was created. If anything is added by the Buddha Stone here in Lanka, anything that might shake or change the beliefs of hundreds of millions of people.” She paused, shivering again. “It could be a disaster. We Buddhists are peaceful, for example. Can you imagine if perhaps an ethic contrary to peace were found inscribed on this stone? No, no. It cannot be. It must not be found.”

“But Ira found it?” Durell asked.

She drew a deep breath. “Shortly before he was kidnapped—two poya days ago, about two weeks before he vanished, he telephoned me. We had not seen each other for a long time. But he was very excited. He said he had made an immense find in the newly uncovered caves, after the reservoir was destroyed and the water ran out and exposed this area. An ancient capital, he said, from Buddha’s times. Some evidence that Chinese merchants had traded here, so long ago. Chinese gifts, priceless. And— the Buddha Stone. He said he hoped to find it.”

Durell said, “I think he did. I think his kidnapping was a cover-up. This man, Dr. Mouquerana Sinn, has it. He wants to get it out of the country to—somewhere. Certainly it could shake the world. It is the sort of deviltry that Hung herself could not have handled.”

He stood up. The wind felt cold as he looked at the loom of dark, starlit mountains to the east. He tried to connect Aspara’s words to his own predicament. It fitted together somehow. He took a deep breath of the clear air.

“Aspara, you must trust me.”

"I am afraid,” she whispered. “All my life, I have followed the sacred precepts—”

“Trust me,” he said again.

Skoll said, “In the capitalistic imperialist societies of the West, the superstitions of religion are often a great factor in controlling the downtrodden masses—”

“Shut up,” Durell said.

“But this is more than a simple matter of rescuing one of your diplomats, Comrade Cajun. More than clearing your name or eliminating a defector from my department. Perhaps even more than stopping at once any revival of the Hung apparatus under this man Sinn.”

“Yes, it is,” Durell said.

thirteen

He walked quietly back to the car.

They had to walk the last four miles to the site. A rough road cut across a forested slope of the mountain, and then the trail deteriorated into little more than a footpath and the great Rolls could go no farther. It was past two in the morning before they reached the place where the government police had dug out the nest of terrorists who had been camped here. Durell hid the car as best he could where the passable road ended. The place where the artificial lake had been was a deep, wide scar in the thick vegetation, with one of the high dikes bombed out and only a trickle of water from a mountain spring making a thread of silver in the starlight. High slopes surrounded the site. Here and there amid the scarred area were blocks of stone, tipped crazily this way and that, and he saw the dark mouths of caves, some with temple facades eroded by the ages when irrigation water had covered them.

“It is terrible,” Aspara whispered. “I do not wish to go on. I am too tired.”

“You must go on,” Durell told her. “Come.”

The path was devious, filled with small stones, marking the recent footpaths the PFM had trodden amid the litter of the ages. A solemn silence filed the air. A bird hooted, lonely and high on the mountain above. Durell paused at the sound and looked and listened. Skoll, huge and powerful at his side, took out his gun and faced and searched the other way. His voice rumbled softly. “It is nothing.”

“Perhaps.”

"Da. Perhaps. I do not like this place. I agree with Madame Aspara.”

Durell said, “You smell a trap?”

“I smell something, yes.”

The tank had been a large one, quite deep, filling the length of the valley beneath them. Durell climbed down slowly toward the dried mud bottom of the old reservoir. Now and then they passed crumbled cut stones that marked forgotten structures. He kept his eyes on the cave mouths. Most were on the opposite side of the emptied tank. He led the way across the high dike, noting that more sculptured stones had been used to form its base. This place had been old when the reservoir was first built. The bulwark was broken on the far side, by the bombs recently. The little mountain stream just trickled through. He held Aspara’s hand as they climbed down in the gap, then up again.

The bird hooted once more.

Durell could see nothing on the hills or in the valley. He lifted his gun, then lowered it. With less than three hours to dawn, the night was darkest now. The starlight helped him pick out the remains of a main path that twisted up from the dried mud banks of the emptied tank. The girl breathed quickly and lightly in the high mountain air. Now and then she adjusted the saree she wore, to help her with the climb.

The old bunkers of the PFM were still visible on the mountainside, scarred and littered with broken shell casings. The remains of old cook fires, a torn blanket, a canteen, some rags hanging from a tree limb, testified to the surprise battle here. Durell studied the shattered bunkers and moved across a clearing to where a new nylon ten stood out against the wreckage.

“Ira’s?” he asked Aspara.

She nodded, her eyes alert and aware, covering an almost primitive fear in her mind. Durell knew her fear came from reluctance to have her faith shaken and uprooted by any new findings here, perhaps a new doctrine in the hands of unscrupulous foreigners, as she would think of it.

“Don’t worry,” he said.

“I can’t help it.”

A new path had been cut down the dried mud sides ol the old reservoir. He pointed to it. “Did Ira have a crew ol workmen with him?”

“It is possible. But he often liked to dig alone. He was an amateur, after all.” She smiled faintly. “With the luck that so often comes to amateurs, I think.”

He led the way down the new path. It took him along a line of cave mouths, small openings in the mud wall framed with stone plinths from which ancient carvings had long been eroded by the water. A larger opening farther on drew him to it. In some places, the path cut into the cracked earth was still wet and slippery. Footprints, some booted, some barefooted, still showed in the yielding soil. The bottom of the tank was only ten feet below the path cut into its newly exposed sides. Durell halted. Something lay there, sprawled in obvious death, arms and legs at awkward, unnatural angles. Aspara sucked in her breath.

“It’s not Ira,” Durell said quickly. “Perhaps one of his assistants.”

“Yes, he wears only a loincloth. Thin and half-starved.” Aspara’s voice was touched with bitterness. “One of my poor countrymen.”

Skoll said, “He was shot through the head. Like an execution, eh?”

Durell had brought the torch from the Rolls, and now he took it and held it in his left hand, his gun in his right, and approached the largest of the caves that had been exposed by the lowered water. His boots squelched in soft mud as he stepped just inside.

“You and Skoll stay here. Skoll, be careful.”

“I shall be,” the Siberian grumbled. “But I should like to go in with you.”

“There may be more than a bird watching us.”

Durell stepped farther into the dark hole. He smelled centuries-old rot, the decay of mud, noisome odors he could not define, and did not wish to. He touched the stone wall with his left hand that held the torch, but he did not use the lamp. The mud sucked at his shoes. There was an almost immediate lift to the floor of the cave, and he slipped a little, making a small sound. He paused and waited. The stone walls of the cave had once been carved, but again the action of water in the reservoir had smoothed it out. He took a few more steps from the cave entrance and then felt a turn to the right and followed it for a dozen paces. He looked back. The entrance was now cut off from sight, and he snapped the button on the torch, pointing it ahead.

The light leaped dazzlingly before him, and a grotesque masked face seemed to jump back at him. His nerves screamed briefly; then he realized it was only an eroded statue of a Hindu guard deity. Above it was coiled the form of a Naga, the Cobra’s Bow, very old, almost unrecognizable now.

He went on, wondering if the place was a trap, but prepared to present himself as bait to spring it.

He was above the old water level now, and although the air in this cave temple was still humid and clammy, the way underfoot was dry. A ramp reached upward before him, the steps worn very smooth. He wondered how many pilgrims had walked or crawled up here in ages gone by. Now that he was in the upper area, into the slope of the mountain, he noted the remains of peeling frescoes on the walls. Great chunks of the plaster had long crumbled and fallen into dust, but the colors of gods and goddesses in complicated sexual attitudes were still vivid enough to identify. He dried his palm on his thigh. It was cold in the cave-temple. He paused to study a particularly active god, with an enormous phallus, being attended by three maidens in jeweled diadems and nothing else. His glance caught on a new piece of timber, a rough two-by-four, and a scaffold of sorts that had been erected nearby. Ira Sanderson’s work, he guessed. Glass glittered underfoot. Spent flashbulbs, crumpled wax paper was evidence of a sandwich lunch, eaten less than a week ago. A crate filled with excelsior stood open, ready to be packed with treasures.

A half-round moon gate led him up a small flight of steps into a larger cavern. Here were the rudiments of a typically formal Buddhist temple of today, a pratimaghara consisting of three chambers, the madapaya, or porch, and now he stood in the anteroom, the atarala. This davala, set in the mountainside unthinkable generations ago, had probably been dedicated in its origin to some prehistoric deity, judging by the grotesque idols of gods and goddesses still on their pedestals or remotely carved in the walls. Obviously it had been assimilated and sanctified as subservient to the Hindu pantheon under the invading Dravidian influence. He stood now in what had been the Dancing Women’s Hall, made obvious by the faded, sinuous paintings still evident on the walls. Beyond was another arched doorway, where the avudha, or god’s insignia, would be placed. In this case, he thought, the inner sanctum, the garbhaya, should contain no other image but that of Buddha.

He stepped through the third doorway.

A hidden world of treasures greeted him, flashing and flickering back in the red of rubies and blues and yellows of countless other gems encrusting the large pedestal that stood in solitary, remote splendor in the center of the sanctum.

His pause was a pure reflex.

And disastrous.

His first impression of the jeweled pedestal was that it was empty. Whatever had once been placed there was gone.

His torch was unnecessary. A small electric lamp illuminated the big, echoing chamber, set on the base of what had once been the life-size image of some god. The comers of the room were webbed in shadows. But the man who sat casually on one hip upon a comer of the central pedestal was plain enough to see.

“Ah. Mr. Durell, of K Section.”

He was big, with a strong face carved in flat, muscular planes, with thick black hair and dark blue eyes and heavy shoulders. He wore a khaki shirt and a knitted sweater-vest and heavy corduroy slacks with a wide belt. He seemed to be unarmed. When he stood up, smiling, a steel tooth flashed in his mouth. He was as tall as Durell, the same height, the same general conformation of body and face.

Durell said, “I owe you something, Kubischev.”

“Ah. Ah. You know of me, then. You have worked very quickly to get here so soon.”

“Not quick enough, I think.” Durell listened to the man’s precise English, with its flat mechanical perfection, and recognized the teaching methods of the KGB in Moscow. He said, “I suppose you have been waiting for me.”

“Naturally. Ah—your gun, Mr. Durell. It is quite useless. You are covered, of course, from there—-” The tall man pointed gently toward an opening in the rear of the garbhaya, and then to another “—and there. Moreover, our people have taken your Madame Aspara and my—ah— former superior, Colonel Cesar Skoll, by now.”

Durell saw the shadowy shapes of other men in the rear entrances to the cave-temple. Kubischev slid his hip off the jeweled pedestal and came forward, his hand extended.

“I regret the inconvenience I caused you, Mr. Durell. You are a sensible man, however, and know the necessities of our profession. It was I, of course, who went to Geneva and deposited the incriminating funds in your name in the Swiss bank. It was quite simple. We are an efficient organization. You will understand that. Papers, documents, are most easily executed. We will have long talks, you and I. You will see that everything will turn out for the best.”

There were sounds behind Durell, the scuffling of feet, a sudden roar of outrage from Skoll’s deep voice.

Aspara screamed.

Durell turned his head. He did not think that Kubischev could move that fast. He was still aware of the man’s smile, his outstretched hand, when he was hit.

Pain burst behind his eyes, spread down one shoulder, made his right hand numb. He dimly heard his gun hit the floor. He tried to turn, and another blow smashed him to his knees. He wondered dimly why he had come here, after all, only to find this; but he had invited it; he could not complain.

Then a foot kicked him, and he went over; and something else hit his head again, and he fell through reality into an appalling, echoing place of darkness.

fourteen

“My dear Durell,” someone said. “How can I express my regrets over our Andrei’s enthusiastic behavior?”

He kept his eyes closed. He made his breathing sound slow and shallow.

“You do not fool me,” said the voice. “You are quite awake. Open your eyes, sir.”

Durell lay still. He allowed sensory awareness to slide back into his muscles and nerves. Light shone through his closed lids. There was a rope over his ankles and wrists, which were stretched high overhead. He heard the sound of thick, asthmatic breathing. The soft shuffle of feet.

“Durell, do not try my patience.” The soft, heavy voice tightened a bit. “In this world, all things are measured by the great arbiter of time. Time is precious, it is a friend, it is an enemy. It is our greatest gift. It is your gift, for the moment. It can be removed. In two hours, you will be useless to me. So come. Do not pretend. Speak.”

“To hell with you,” Durell said.

His head ached. The light through his eyelids sent pain through his temples. When he breathed, he felt the deep bruise along his ribs where he had been kicked.

“Open your eyes when you speak to Dr. Sinn.” That was Kubischev’s voice. The words were followed by a stinging slap that knocked Durell’s head aside. “Show respect to your new boss, eh?”

Durell opened his eyes to blinding light. He winced, and someone murmured and a hand appeared and swung the lamp away. He lay on something hard and cold, not a bed, something that felt like polished stone. One of the pedestals in the garbhaya. He could not see the owner of the unctuous voice. The man sat beyond his head, where he could not be glimpsed. But he heard the steady, heavy, asthmatic breathing.

“All things,” said the voice, “are subject to time. The life of Ira Sanderson hangs on it. So does the life of your woman, Aspara.”

“Is she safe?” Durell asked.

“No. 'Are you interested?”

“I’d like to know.”

“Her safety depends on you.”

“And Skoll?”

“Why should you be concerned about your rival?” “Did you kill my rival?”

“Not yet. He is an unexpected surprise. Perhaps he too can be recruited. Poor Andrei does not approve of this. He says he knows Colonel Skoll too well to believe he would ever desert the KGB and Mother Russia. Skoll is a patriot. I think otherwise. All men have their price.”

“What happens in two hours?” Durell asked.

“The time limit, sir, runs out on the delivery of the ransom money and the plane for Mr. Sanderson. I would hate to execute the fool. But perhaps I must, if merely to illustrate that I mean what I say, in future deals I mean to have with your government in Washington.”

“Let me sit up,” Durell said.

“Yes. Riches and power can be yours, if you are reasonable. Andrei?”

He felt a knife slice through his bonds. It was a relief to lower his arms. His head still throbbed. He sat up carefully, resisting the sudden nausea that cramped his stomach.

It passed. He turned slowly on the slab of stone and looked at the source of the voice directed at him.

The room was not the cave-temple after all. It was a painted chamber, the walls covered with more erotic postures of dancing girls long dead and tumescent men, the colors faded but still vigorous after all the ages gone by. A rich carpet had been spread on the stone floor. The b! ck of stone on which he rested was carved with intricate, devilish beasts, but none of the satanic faces on the car mgs could match that of the stout man who sat, knees apart, a turban on his head, a silk robe like a tent around his gross body, smiling at him.

He had once thought of his enemy, Madame Hung, as the epitome of evil.

But this man was possessed by it.

It was an essence, a fluid, an aura of darkness that surrounded the round face, the small head on grotesque shoulders, the swollen, slippered feet, the jeweled hands folded complacently over a bulging paunch. Durell could not tell the color of the eyes. The entire eye seemed dark, so that the iris was not clearly defined, and over them were heavy arched brows that seemed firmly fixed in satanic arrogance.

“Dr. Sinn?” Durell asked.

“Dr. Mouquerana K.V. Sinn, my dear man. A messenger of the All-Powerful. I am what you see in me. I can tell. You may believe what you see, sir. No, do not approach me. You may do so only under pain of death.”

There were six or seven other men in the big room, all carrying Russian AK-47 automatic rifles. They wore a kind of uniform, gray trousers and tennis shoes and gray turbans, together with cartridge belts and clips slung over their bare brown torsos. PFM terrorists, Durell thought. They looked sharp and alert and dangerous. He checked his step toward the enormous fat man.

“You’ve gone to a lot of trouble to get me here.” Durell said. “Just tell me why. You’ve put my own people on my heels, set to kill me. Why?”

Mouquerana Sinn chuckled. “But you are here and alive, yes? It speaks very well for you. It verifies judgment. My dear sir, I need men like you. I can use you.”

“I’m not for sale, like Kubischev.”

“All men are for sale. The prices may differ, the method of payment vary. But for sale you are, and you shall be mine. It is that simple.”

“Not at any price,” Durell said.

“Not for almost any price, my dear sir. I have checked your background most thoroughly. You are a patriot, like Colonel Skoll, although you may deny it. You would sacrifice Madame Aspara, if necessary. But your own survival? It is the essence of your being. You are not a coward—far from it. You have risked your life many times. But to survive through it—ah, that is your true essence. A careful man, you are, and a dangerous and marvelous creature whom I can use, yes, use to the fullest. And you will survive with riches and power, with the true and marvelous goal far beyond your mercenary activities for your government—this, as you shall see, shall buy you.”

Dr. Sinn clapped his fat, jeweled hands. “Andrei, send in the woman, that foolish politician. And you may as well let Skoll hear what I have to say.”

“I won’t change my mind,” said Durell.

“Indeed? We shall see.”

'Kubischev left the big room quickly. None of the guards stirred. Durell rubbed the back of his head, trying to relieve his headache. The room seemed more like the audience chamber of some medieval royalty than a cave grotto. The old underground temple certainly dated back at least two millennia, he thought. He considered the entrance Sanderson had discovered, when the water burst from the tank during the fighting. But Dr. Sinn had been here before that. Since the first entrance had always been hidden under water, Sinn must have used another when establishing his quarters here; there was evidence that Sinn’s use of this place had been for much longer than the time since the PFM battle. He kept the thought of another exit in mind, for future use.

In this setting of faded splendor, Aspara looked proud and regal, her eyes challenging the gross man seated on his massive chair. Skoll shambled in after her like a shaggy bear, his face like broken stone.

“Ah, Madame Aspara.” Sinn's voice piped a bit higher.

His small eyes in his fleshy face were contemptuous. “Where a woman meddles, there are unnecessary problems. The world is still the world of men, my dear. My predecessor in this affair was a woman, you know, a certain creature named Hung. Your companions dispatched her some time ago. Durell and Skoll are very competent men. I mean to have them for my own. Hung was a fool. True, I worked for her and performed certain chores for the Black House in Peking. You are concerned about my presence in your country? Yes, I see you are. But Sri Lanka has no importance to me. I am here. I wish to depart. Your former husband provides the key. But I forget my manners, ah.” Sinn turned his huge body slightly in the chair. “Tea and cakes for everyone. Chinese cakes, please.”

One of the guards vanished through the rear entrance. Sinn sighed. Durell could not see any teeth in the man’s mouth.

Durell said, “You pretend to be your own boss, but you mentioned being someone’s messenger. Who is that?”

“Ah. Ah.” Sinn began to laugh, a thin sound that shook his chest and pendulous belly. The smell of incense came from somewhere, filling the chamber. The servant came back with a silver tea service trundled on a large-wheeled Victorian tea-cart. The sound of Sinn’s amusement abruptly ended. “A messenger? A lackey for another man? Sir, I served an apprenticeship to the devil’s own mistress, Madame Hung. But no more, no more. Her death, thanks to you, ended that bondsman’s status. I promoted myself to the service of the Superior One himself.”

Skoll said heavily, “Then you do have a superior?”

“Ah, yes, yes.” Sinn stood up ponderously, urging his massive weight up with a thrust of his arms. He would weigh, Durell guessed, at least four hundred pounds, but whether there was muscle under all that fat remained to be seen. He watched the man and felt the evil in him, the aura that emanated from him. Sinn’s high, thin voice was stretched taut with sudden nervous strength. “Sir, I be!ieve sincerely that there are true forces of evil in our universe, Perhaps you will think I am mad when I say this. Through the ages, however, this evil has been recognized in all its various forms—Light and Dark, Satan and God, the goodness of the Great Wheel of Life and Death. I have long believed that this world, because of its ills, because of all the grief and pain, the wars and pestilence, the very wickedness of man—this little planet of ours, my dear sir, belongs to Satan.”

Sinn seemed to catch his breath. His strange eyes, almost all black, gave an impression of revealing the open chasms of Hell itself. The authority and conviction in his words could not be denied.

“I repeat, this world is ruled by the Evil One, whatever his name. What exists in the rest of the universe is not our concern. But I have chosen to serve the Dark Master himself. I, Mouquerana Sinn, am his Messenger. And I shall openly establish his rule, irrevocably, and so gain Satan’s pleasures and rewards.”

Colonel Skoll drew a deep voice. His deep voice was rumble in contrast to Sinn’s thin piping. “You’re mad, eh?”

Sinn waved a fat, jeweled hand. “So says the whole world. But ponder on it, and in a short time, we shall continue our discussion. You will be fed and made comfortable. When I wish to see you again, you will be summoned.”

fifteen

The hour before dawn was cold, and the wind whistled through the barred hole in the wall that served as a window. Only the dimmest of starlight Outlined the opening in the wall. The cell was empty except for a chair. The door was of heavy planking, and when Durell and Aspara were thrust without ceremony into the cell, he heard the double click of bolts being thrust solidly home. Skoll was not taken to the same cell.

For a long time, Aspara was silent, standing at the window bars to stare across the little valley with its scarred mud bottom. Now and then, her splendid figure moved as she shivered. She hugged herself against the chill.

Durell wished for a drink, a cigarette, an aspirin. He was hungry. Slowly, his headache eased. He tested the door, he paced the floor, he found nothing of interest. There was no way out. Then Aspara spoke from the little window.

“He is quite insane, of course.”

“But brilliant,” Durell returned.

“Perhaps the whole world is insane. Terror and violence are the syndromes of today.”

“Did you ever hear of Dr. Sinn before?”

“No.” She shuddered and paused. “And I am glad of it. He is so—so—She paused again. “I could almost believe him. Perhaps this helpless little w rid of ours is truly the domain of evil. How else can one explain the wars, the wickedness of men? Are we the devil's puppets, then? Does he play his evil game with us? Is Dr. Sinn right?” “No,” Durell said. “And I don’t think his madness interferes with his thinking.”

She shuddered again. “Did you notice his eyes? So strange, so dark, like gateways into an evil too awful to contemplate.”

“A physiological quirk,” Durell said.

She turned angrily. “You Americans are such optimists. Such—Pollyannas. You believe this is the best of all possible worlds. But is it so? What about my son George? Where is he? Did he die in the street, back there? Did he crack his head open, or did they just slaughter him there?” Durell thought back to their poya weekend at Negombo, those hours of peaceful idyll beside the aching blue of the Indian Ocean. They had shared love generously, without restraint. Now Aspara was far from him, alien. She had been bred a Sinhala, and in her blood there probably ran the ancient lines of Sinhalese kings and princesses. He understood how she felt about her new country, struggling for security, fighting against the ancient rivalries between the peoples who composed Sri Lanka. This day and this life were only motes in the eye of time. Their efforts today might mean nothing in the long pageant of destructive history.

“Dear Sam? . . .”

“Yes.”

“I am sorry for what has happened between us.”

“You’re sorry about Negombo?”

“No, no.” She turned from the window. “Never that, dear Sam. But I have seen this violent side of you; I have seen your strength and singleness of purpose. I wonder if Negombo was simply your way of searching for Ira.”

“We haven’t seen Sanderson yet,” he reminded her. “Aren’t you concerned for him, as well as for George?” “Ira was always a foolish man. Not like you. Not like you at all. I no longer feel anything for him, except as anj decent person should be concerned about another. As you are not, poor Sam.”

“I’m alone,” he said. “I have my job to do.”

“Alone with your job, yes. With your business, as you call it.”

“My business is to stop people like Dr. Mouquerana Sinn from spreading his gospel in the world. I don’t believe in anarchism or violence. I dislike violence, myself.” “But you use it.”

“Can you stop a charging tiger with a prayer and £ pious wish?” he asked.

She did not reply.

A pearly light made the mountains seem blacker beneath their summits. Footsteps sounded outside the cell. Aspara took Durell’s hand, as if she waited for an executioner, Her fingers were cold, and they trembled.

The massive figure of Mouquerana Sinn filled the doorway. Light flooded in behind him from electric lanterns He had changed from the costume of an oriental despot to Western clothing, a dark blue suit and immaculate white shirt with a flowing black necktie. His head, with a dark shock of hair, seemed even smaller than before, on his mountainous shoulders.

His thin voice piped like a toad. “Ah. You hold hands, Your belief in the romantic is a useful tool for me. I came to inform you that my demands for the ransom of Mr. Ira Sanderson have been met. A jet plane quite adequate to my needs is now waiting at Kasmaiana Airport, south o Colombo. The ransom money, half a million in American dollars, is safely aboard. My servant, the Cobra’s Bow, has checked everything. It is all according to plan.” The thin high giggle followed the fat man’s words. “Of course, neither the plane nor the money interests me. It is not enough. Are you surprised?”

“No,” said Durell.

Aspara said quickly, “I wish to ask about my son, George. We had to abandon him on the way, and we have heard—”

“Young George is quite safe. A useful lad, when not in his cup of drugs. You will see him shortly.”

“Drugs? Are you certain?”

Sinn ignored her. “Mr. Durell, have you given more consideration to my offer?”

“Not for very long.”

“Ah. It takes time to reconcile yourself to the fact that you are a man without a country, hunted everywhere by everyone. You cannot hope to survive long, eh? Have you considered, with some small gratitude, that I have in effect rescued you from certain death?”

Durell stared into the man’s murky eyes. A sense of red lights gleamed in their depths. He looked at the armed guards. His own weapon had been taken from him long ago. He spoke quietly, “What can you gain by your scheme? Aren’t you going to collect the plane and the money?”

“The PFM can have the money. I do not despise wealth; it gives one power; but it is not enough for my purpose. Now that I am expected to deliver Sanderson at the airport, I will leave Ceylon with my trophy by another route.”

“What trophy?” Aspara asked sharply.

“Why, Madame Aspara, the fabled Buddha Stone, of course.”

She sucked in her breath. “It does not exist. It has never existed. It is a myth.”

“Not at all. Your former husband, Ira, found it. The mere discovery almost caused him to collapse with excitement. You shall see it soon. And with it, my dear woman, I can command much more than any amount of money could buy.”

“What about Sanderson?” Durell asked. “Will you give him up to the authorities?”

“Since I will not collect the money, I shall keep him. Do you think that unethical? Remember, I am a messenger. I do not abide by your foolish rules of goodness and morality. If one is once freed of such conditioning, the freedom is more heady than the world’s best wine. You cannot imagine it yet, sir. But soon you will, you will.”

“I’d like to see it now. And Ira, too.”

“Naturally. We have time, perhaps an hour, before we leave this place. I will be expected at Kasmaiana Airport; and naturally, I shall use another route to escape Ceylon with the stone. Do not be eager to know our destination.” There was a sudden chill in Sinn’s words, a breath of evil, torment, and pain, waiting in the thin words. “It is there that I shall convince you to join me—and be convinced of your sincerity—or you will have to be eliminated.”

Sanderson’s room was a cell like their own, but it contained a rough camp cot, a long table of two planks, a chair, a portable battery radio from which issued a strange medley of Moslem music from the station up north at Jaffna. The radio was going full blast when Durell followed Aspara in, ushered along by an armed PFM guard.

“Yes? I’m busy, you know. I really do not like to be disturbed.”

Ira Sanderson was very tall, very thin, so that his angular body, with his sharp nose supporting crooked, steel-rimmed glasses, looked somewhat like a praying mantis. He wore an old gray sweater with worn leather elbow patches, and baggy checked slacks stuffed into ankle boots. Behind his round glasses, his eyes were vague. He needed a shave. There was a fading yellow bruise on his high forehead. His hair was pale yellow, thinning, shot with gray.

“Ira,” Aspara said gently.

“Eh? Oh, good Lord. It’s you, Aspara? What in heaven’s name are you doing here? And who is this man?” “We’ve been looking for you, trying to rescue you.”

“Oh, nonsense, nonsense. I’m perfectly fine.”

Durell said, “Are you here willingly?”

“What? Oh, well. Not exactly. But I’m quite content, you see. It’s rather a relief—” Sanderson’s grin showed long teeth—“not to worry about diplomatic chores for a while. I’m really having a marvelous time, just marvelous. I’m quitting the Foreign Service, of course. What I’m going to do now is concentrate on these old digs here, write several papers on the development of Buddhism in Lanka, and form an exhibit for the Ceylonese government, the museum in Colombo, you know. It’s all quite exciting.”

Durell wondered how the man could detach himself so far from reality. Don’t you realize you’ve been kidnapped?”

“Technically, I suppose. It’s all a lot of silliness. Be forgotten by tomorrow. Aspara, you look just marvelous.” “Ira, are you in good health?” the woman asked.

“Kind of you to inquire. Yes, of course. I’ve been treated very well. Left alone to pursue my work. Here, look at this.” Sanderson waved to the mass of broken shards on his plank table. “This cave-temple may well be one of the first devalas dedicated from a pantheon of primitive gods to the worship of Buddha, following his visit here.”

“You found the Buddha Stone?” Durell asked quietly. The tall, thin man grinned, poked up his glasses, turned his sharp nose back to Durell. “Ah, you have heard of it, my dear chap? Marvelous. Absolutely earthshaking. It will create a far greater revolution than any yet sustained by civilization. Its end is not predictable. As a matter of fact, Dr. Sinn is not far off the mark, you know. He sounds absolutely balmy at times, talking about the world in the grip of incarnate evil, but what I’ve so far translated of Buddha’s remarks—very difficult, rudimentary—I’ve only gotten pieces of the fractured script, a form of Ghodanese, very ancient—”

“Where is it?” Durell asked.

“The Buddha Stone? Oh, Dr. Sinn has it safely crated. I worked from photographs after he arrived here. But it is quite safe. Nothing will harm it.”

Aspara was deeply troubled. “Ira, listen to me. Please. You know my beliefs. Is the stone authentic?”

“Oh, yes, my dear. By the way, has George arrived yet?”

“We’re expecting him,” Durell said. “Are you?”

“Sinn promised to bring him on.” Sanderson sighed and looked at his table. “Quite glad you’re here, old fellow. Did you know you look a bit like that Russian chap,

what’s his name, Kubischev? Don’t like him a bit. Rather sullen. And he cares nothing, absolutely nothing about the stone.”

Aspara spoke desperately. “Ira, have you truly considered the consequences of making all this public? Have you considered the fact that Buddha is only recorded, as far as we know, in—”

“Makes it quite interesting, doesn’t it? As if one suddenly discovered in Israel some scripts written by Christ, eh? And perhaps material contrary to what we’ve known from the gospels. Oh, my,” Sanderson said. He drew a deep breath into his skinny chest. “I really must get back to my work now.”

“Ira,” Aspara insisted, “we haven’t seen each other for over two years, you know.”

The man’s manner changed as he stared at her with cool gray eyes. “Yes, and that’s all over now, is it not?” Really, we both agreed we were totally incompatible, and the divorce was the best thing hr the world for us both. I really regret your arrival here. Let us not be emotional, eh? I have my work to do.”

Sanderson turned back to his plank table. Aspara trembled again as she touched Durell’s arm. Her face was very pale.

“Come,” she said.

sixteen

“So you see why I could not live with that man,” Aspara said, a little later.

“He seems harmless.”

“He could upset the whole world, with his harmlessness.”

“Sooner or later, someone would have found the Buddha Stone,” Durell said. “It just fell to Ira. You have to face it. If the find is publicized, everyone will have to face it.”

“I cannot.”

“Mouquerana Sinn will see to it, Aspara. It’s his big weapon, far more important to him than hundreds of millions in money. With it, he can buy support and run an invisible empire for the power he wants.”

She turned an anguished face toward him. “Can you not stop him, Sam?”

“I’m going to try,” he said.

The morning light slid down the slopes of the hills in a smooth, silent flood, touching the valley bottom and the slim, twisting road with touches of green and blue and lilac. They stood on the mountain top under the watchful eyes of the PFM, who held their weapons at the ready. These were picked men, alert, intelligent, powerfully built. There were two Toyota scout cars waiting on the rudimentary trail they had reached by marching up the slope from the empty tank. Dr. Sinn was waiting for them there, and Durell wondered how the man had managed his weight on the climb.

Beside the scout cars was a large truck with slat sides and a canvas top and a sign in English, Sinhala, and Arabic indicating kerosene and kitchen tinware for sale. It reminded Durell of an old-time Western gypsy peddler’s wagon, with its banging, clanging utensils hanging on the sides. Aspara and Sanderson were herded into the rattletrap truck. Kubischev seemed to avoid getting close to the colonel, but at the last moment there was a low exchange of Russian between the two men.

Skoll’s face flushed angrily. His massive fist came up as he bellowed, “Traitor! Fool!” and Skoll hit the man on the jaw. As Kubischev reeled back against the tailgate, Skoll kicked him in the kneecap, jumped forward, and swung a massive blow at the other’s chest, just below the heart. It should have killed Kubischev, but the man turned as he slid downward, deflecting it, although his scream was instantaneous. Even Durell heard the thin crack of a bone.

Before Skoll could finish the job, he was attacked by two of the PFM, who came at him with their guns.

Dr. Sinn’s voice was shrill over the shouting. “Do not kill him! Understand? He must be kept alive!”

They nodded and swung their gun butts against Skoll’s bald head. The Siberian struggled brutally, careless of the blows battering him. He managed to get another kick at Kubsichev’s prone figure before they dragged him, raging, backward.

“I cannot tolerate the swine!” Skoll shouted. “To sell out for money to a monster! To betray me and the people of Socialist Russia! To turn into a running dog for this—”

The guards had dragged Skoll toward Mouquerana Sinn. Skoll finished his words by spitting full into the fat man’s face. One of the guards lost patience, and his rifle came down and Skoll sank into a heap at Sinn’s feet, his face and head a mass of blood.

Dr. Sinn said calmly, “Tie him up. Throw him in the truck. He will be useful later—after he pays the price of his folly. Is Kubischev alive?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Badly hurt?”

“A cracked rib, sir,” said the guard.

“Attend to him. Tell him he has disappointed' me.” “Yes, sir.”

“Mr. Durell?”

Durell came closer to the ponderous man, whose strange black eyes seemed to swallow the light of dawn. “Mr. Durell, have you considered my offer further?” “Not really.”

“I want you to work for me. I am in the business of collecting and selling the world’s most important commodity today. Information. Data. Nations depend on it, history develops from it, power comes to the possessor of such facts. Sir, you have a high sense of survival. I presume to use this and bring you into my service. I need men like you and Skoll. Data is currency in this bomb-threatened world. I will collect it through you and others like you. A man might not defect or betray his country for mere money, that is true; but there are those who will do so for power, if they are historically ambitious. To make a mark upon history is a form of immortality—something we all yearn for. What is more, you will finally be awakened to the true state of affairs on this planet of ours, which is under the Dark One’s sway. When you recognize and accept this and know that I am his true messenger, then you will feel a freedom of mind and spirit as you have never known before. You will live with it and profit from it.” “No chance,” Durell said.

“Pray that I accept you, sir, or you are a dead man. The other side of the coin is riches and power.”

“I don’t dream of money or power,” Durell said.

The strange dark eyes in that round, malignant face grew wider and darker. Dr. Sinn started to raise an arm but was interrupted by the sudden jabbering of one of the guards. The man pointed down the valley behind them.

Far below, toiling across the broken dam that had once held back the waters of the tank, was the perverse figure of Willie Wells.

The black man had obtained another rifle. Even at this distance, his figure represented a desperate, determined will, a dogged and implacable aim to do what he meant to do.

“Give me a rifle,” Sinn snapped.

“Let him be,” Durell said. “He can’t follow us in these trucks.”

Sinn’s heavy black brows lifted. “Ah. You are sentimental about killing him?”

“He’s only doing his job.”

“His job is to kill you.”

“I know that. But he can’t do anything just now.”

“He is a nuisance. He has come this far on your trail. He may come farther.”

Sinn took the heavy hunting rifle that one of his men gave him and raised it to his ponderous shoulders. He moved his tiny feet a little, spreading his massive weight, and took careful aim through the scope. The little figure of Willie Wells came on, unaware of his imminent death. “No,” Durell said again.

The fat man paid no attention. At the last moment, as Sinn’s knuckle tightened on the trigger, Durell tore loose from the grip of his guards and got his right arm free. With a sudden gesture, just as the shot was fired, he knocked up the barrel of the heavy rifle and the bullet slammed harmlessly toward the dawning sun.

The shot echoed back and forth from the silent mountains. The small figure on the dam in the valley paused. Everything about Wells indicated exhaustion and surprise. He lifted his rifle as he futilely scanned the hilltops for the source of the shot.

Sinn did not explode with rage. His piping chuckle touched Durell briefly. “Such loyalty, my dear Durell, deserves to be rewarded. And so you shall be. You wish Wells to live? So be it. He may be useful too.” He signaled to two of his men. “Go get that American. Bring him along after us. As for you, Durell, you touched me. You interfered with my wishes. I must teach you that such behavior will never be tolerated by Mosquerana Sinn.”

His heavy brows lifted to someone behind him. Durell never saw die vicious blow that suddenly smashed down on the back of his head like a trip-hammer. He was driven to his knees. The last thing he heard was Sinn’s thin laughter as he went out.

Everything rocked and heaved and lifted and fell, rolling from right to left and back again. His left arm ached, and he knew he had been given a sedative to prolong his sleep. His head, surprisingly, did not ache too badly. Some sort of medication for that too, he thought grudgingly.

He lay in a crude bunk, in a tiny cabin that stank of curry and stale rice and urine. He listened to the creaking, squeaking strains of wood, the rush of water, and knew he was on a boat at sea. The low, persistent beat of a diesel engine made the bunk vibrate. He felt a moment’s nausea, but it passed. He tried to sit up.

“Take it easy, there’s a good fellow.”

He blinked into the dim, smoky light. He saw the reflection of his bloodied face in the steel-rimmed glasses of Ira Sanderson, who was bending over him.

“Ira?”

“You’re quite all right, believe me. We’ve just left Jaffna. Don’t try to talk. Our course seems to be east by north. I saw the compass. It’s just gotten dark.”

“I’ve lost a whole day?”

“It was a most unpleasant day of traveling. The military were searching for us, but Sinn managed everything very tidily, I must say.” Sanderson adjusted his round glasses on his beaked nose. “We’re, on an old Chinese trading junk. At least, it looked like a junk, but it has a highly powered engine and carries a lot of armament.”

“Do you know where we’re going?”

“Somewhere in the Andaman Islands, to headquarters.” “Dr. Sinn told you this?”

“I merely make a supposition. They took your tracker, that Mr. Wells, by the way. He’s with us now, having dinner with Sinn. Mr. Wells and Dr. Sinn seem to be getting along famously.”

Durell looked at the archaeologist's thin, praying-mantis shadow on the wall of the tiny cabin. An oil lamp swung in i:s gimbals from the curved ceiling. The place seemed to smell worse than before. He sat up, and Ira gently pushed him down again.

“You should rest. We have a long way to go.”

“Whose side are you on, anyway?” Durell asked.

“I am not really certain. Sinn has the Buddha Stone aboard, you know.”

“It really exists?”

“Yes, but it is all but indecipherable. Part of it was under water for over a thousand years. Sand scoured the carvings off it. But in Sinn’s hands, of course, he can create a religious and political upheaval that could shake the world and recruit for him his army of fanatics.”

“But you’re helping him,” Durell objected.

“I was merely following my scholastic inclinations. Nothing else seemed important to me.” Ira paused. “Now I am not so certain. He has my son George with him now. George is a drug addict, as you know. I saw it with my own eyes. Sinn supplies him. It makes me quite upset. George isn’t much, but he is my son, after all.”

“And Aspara?”

Ira looked vague for a moment. “Oh, yes. Aspara. She asked me to check on you. Is she in love with you?”

“I don’t think so.”

“A competent woman. Such devotion to her little nation! It really drove us apart, her political ambitions. Are you in love with her?”

“No,” Durell said.

“She thinks you might be.”

“She knows better.”

“But you’ve—uh—had an affair with her?”

Durell said, “Ira, you were divorced years ago. What she does can’t concern you any more.”

“I suppose it shouldn’t. Still, it troubles me a bit, you know. It’s not rational, it’s humiliating, but I’m a little jealous of you, Durell.”

“It’s water under the dam.”

“Not quite. Your relationship still exists.”

Durell said, “What about Colonel Skoll?”

“The Russian? Tied up in the hold, with all the crates or relics I found in the Naradara Sinha devala. A most violent man, Skoll. You and Aspara, please—I must get my mind settled about it.”

“And Kubischev?”

"Andrei is Dr. Sinn’s head man for the moment. I believe Sinn means for you to take his place. So Kubischev is enraged, of course. You must be careful. Did Aspara come with you of her own free will?”

“Yes. You sound as if you want her back.”

“No, no. That would be impossible. But you know her better now than I. She can be saintly, you know. And quite lovely. I’d really forgotten how she was, until I saw her again.” Sanderson turned his head away, his tall body hunched under the low overhead of the cabin. “She is George’s mother, after all. I remember when George was bom, sixteen years ago—”

"George has grown old before his time,” Durell said. “Will you help me, Ira?”

“I couldn’t. I’m not like you. I’m a scholar. The world is sometimes too much for me, you see. That’s why I bury myself in the dead past. That’s why Aspara and I couldn’t get along. She is a woman of today and tomorrow. I live in the yesterdays.”

“You’ve got to help me,” Durell insisted.

“Quite, quite impossible.”

Ira stood up. His bent head scraped the low cabin roof. He poked his glasses up on his nose again.

“Can you get me some water?” Durell asked.

“I’m not permitted. I shouldn’t even be here. I just wanted to talk to you. I don’t understand men like you. I thought I’d be famous, you see, discovering the Buddha Stone. Wined and dined and feted everywhere. But I confess that public appearances frighten me. I’m confused, yes. In any case, it is all academic. Sinn has the Buddha Stone now, for whatever use he plans to make of it.”

“Help me,” Durell asked again.

“No,” Sanderson said firmly.

He slept and dreamed and slept again. He recalled the quiet peace of the bayous during his boyhood in Louisiana. He remembered Yale, and the Litchfield Hills of Connecticut. He remembered girls, simply faces and figures now, without names. He remembered dead men, friends and enemies alike. He dreamed of all the evil in the world, both natural and man-made, the inbred wickedness of some, the compromises made by others. He dreamed of the devil himself and heard Dr. Sinn’s shrill laughter in his skull. Maybe Sinn was right. In all the universe, perhaps only this planet was tom by strife and pain and death, wars and catastrophe.

In his dream, he tried to deny what seemed to be the logic of Sinn’s position. He wanted to live. He cried out, asking the price he was willing to pay for survival.

Only Sinn’s mad laughter answered him.

He told himself he could not belong to any man. Yet the world had cast him out, he was being hunted as a traitor, a defector who men sought only to kill.

If Wells did not succeed, someone else would be sent after him. If he could not somehow get Kubischev to confess about the killings of King and Thompson and about depositing that money in the Geneva bank, he was finished. He dreamed of running down long corridors, turning this way and that, with the hounds of pursuit always at his heels. There was only one end to the way. Gasping, his lungs on fire, his heart pounding, he ran on and on. There was no place to hide, no one to help him. He was doomed to flight until the inevitable end. It would come sooner or later, in some dark alley in London or Buenos Aires, or in some North African village, or perhaps on the Paris Metro. He cried out in his sleep and heard the creaking of the old Chinese trading junk, taking them eastward to the Andaman Sea, to—what? He opened his eyes. The cabin was dark. He drew a shuddering breath and willed his nerves to end their shrieking. He was soaked with sweat. The air in the cabin was stifling. He heard bare feet slap the deck above, heard the shrill of a squeaky block as a line ran through it, felt the ancient boat come about, heaving on the long ground swell that ran up from the Indian Ocean toward Rangoon, the coasts of Southeast Asia. Nobody bothered with the Andaman Islands, once the stopping place for ancient Chinese traders or wandering Arab dhows.

Nothing there but an ugly death, perhaps, or surrender to Sinn. He closed his eyes and tried to rest. He would not submit.

seventeen

The heat struck the brain and crushed the body as if the very light held a million leeches that sucked the juice of life from every cell. The sea was flat calm, a pale blue mirror that reflected the fury of the brazen sky. Here and there on the wide gulf were small flat islands, as if they, too, did not dare to rise against the crushing temper of the sun.

Durell followed Aspara out on the deck of the junk.

“I asked Sinn to let you out,” she said. “It was too cruel to keep you down there in this heat.”

“Then you’re getting along with him?”

She turned her head. “I did not say that. I simply thought of you and asked. He did not deny me.”

“He hates women, you know.”

“I am not concerned about that.”

“Have you seen the Buddha Stone yet??

“No.”

“Or George?”

She bit her Up. “Yes. He is aboard. He’s ill.”

“On drugs?”

“You are always so blunt, aren’t you?”

“I’m honest. Or try to be,” Durell said.

“Honesty can be so cruel.”

“You should face up to George and know what he is. It’s not your fault, not Ira’s. It’s the roll of the dice.”

“Life need not be a gamble.”

“But it often is,” he said.

The junk puttered along at only a few knots per hour. Flying fish broke the water in brilliant flashes of color. They had passed one nest of islets and were heading for another, slightly larger, that had been hidden by the first group. As far as Durell could guess, they had sailed south of the regular Colombo-Rangoon shipping lane to make Duncan Passage between Port Blair, on South Adaman, and Nachuge on Litde Adaman. Once past Cinque Islands and into the Andaman Sea, they had turned north toward Ritchie’s Archipelago, keeping the Andamans to port. When Barren Island was sighted, they turned west, with Mount Diavolo rising from the shimmering dawn and then, above Diligent Strait, their course became twisting and devious, through low mangrove channels where the water shoaled rapidly until the seaman in the junk’s bow was shouting constant warnings. They were in Indian territorial waters now, but in a desolate spate of islets and swampy shoals where only a few thatched houses on stilts proved that people actually inhabited the place.

After a time, Aspara said, “Dear Sam, do you believe Sinn’s statements? To do so is like admitting belief in the devil himself, is it not?”

“Perhaps.”

“He must be stopped. Will you join him?”

“No.”

“He will kill you, if you do not.”

“I know that. I don’t plan to let it happen.”

“But can you stop him?”

“You mean, get the Buddha Stone back?”

“I want you to destroy it,” she said.

“But it’s a priceless relic.”

“I don’t believe in it. The world is troubled enough. It can do no good, if Sinn plans to use it. Need we have another world-shaking—perhaps false—revelation now?”

He smiled grimly. “You dislike my violence. You’ve been remote ever since we started. Do you want me to use violence now, even if I could—which I doubt?”

“Dear Sam.” She paused. “Perhaps I’ve been wrong. Perhaps this world needs men like you to keep it sane.” “That’s against all your principles, Aspara.

She bowed her head. “Yes, it is.”

He waited a moment. The junk had turned into another channel where the wide sweep of the Andaman Sea was effectively cut off. A small village on stilts huddled under the glare of the sun. A fishing boat with a red trapezoid sail headed away from them. When the village fell astern, they headed for a rickety, deserted dock that looked as if it had been there since the first Dutch explorers sailed these seas.

“One more thing, Aspara. About Ira.” He made her look at him. “You know that he still loves you?”

“Yes,” she said. “I think so.”

“That makes a difference, doesn’t it?”

“I am not certain,” she said.

More men poured out of the mangrove brush as the junk docked. Long sheets of woven matting were hauled up on blocks among the coconut trees to screen the wharf from any planes that might search for them. A truck rattled through the dense jungle growth from inland and took them aboard, under the watchful eyes of armed men. Colonel Skoll shambled up to the tailgate as if he were blind, his head battered, his face red and swollen in the suffocating heat. The other Russian, Kubischev, whistled a Volga tune as he herded them forward.

“It is not far now, my friends. But your real destination remains up to you.”

“I spit on you,” Skoll rumbled. “You are a piece of filth. I urinate on the memory of your mother.”

Kubischev laughed. “You can’t goad me again.” Mouquerana Sinn was not in sight. The fat man chose to remain aboard for a more regal, and private, debarkation. Perhaps the gross man did not care to let the others see him maneuver his unwieldy weight to shore. He filed the thought away for possible future use.

The island seemed uninhabited except for Dr. Sinn and his people. There were barrackslike stilt houses beside a small tumbling stream that flanked the road, but the village had been burned out and only a few wild pigs scampered away as they passed. The jungle seemed impenetrable. The trail twisted upward, although the island was not hilly, and for a time they followed the swamp, laced with tangled vines and rotting, fallen trees, inhabited by whitenecked crows of the sort seen in India. Rice paddies that had once been cultivated by the missing villagers were overgrown and neglected, filled with tidal saltwater. The island was not long, perhaps four miles north and south, and less than two miles in width. Its appearance was morbid and unhealthy. The tall trees shut out the sun, but not the humid heat. It was a place of dark shadows, of sucking mud, of desolation. Appropriate to Dr. Sinn, Durell thought.

They were skirting a salt pond on the eastern shore, heading for another dense grove of trees, when Willie Wells fell into step beside him.

“Sizing it all up, Cajun? Can you make it out?”

Durell looked at the black man. “It’s possible.”

“We’re in for it. We can’t get away.”

"‘We?”

Wells laughed silently. “It’s a problem. I’ve hired out to Mouquerana Sinn. Not much choice. And the profits look good.” Nothing moved in Willie Wells’ eyes. They looked bloody and tired. He smelled as if he hadn’t bathed for days. He didn’t seem to be armed; Sinn had taken his gun from him. But he still walked along with an easy, long stride that gave evidence of his dogged stamina. The fine bones in his face stuck out, shining with sweat. His hair was cropped close to his round skull. “You think I’m a rat, then?”

“A misguided rat,” Durell said.

“They say you saved my life when Dr. Sinn was ready to pop me off with his rifle.”

“And once before, at the walauwa.”

“That’s right. You could have wiped me right there when you jumped me. So why?”

“Dr. Sinn is my job, not you,” Durell said.

“But you know my orders. It wasn’t easy for McFee to direct me after you. Did you know that your girlfriend in his office, Deirdre Padgett, quit when she heard about it? Nobody’s seen her since. The boss cabled me to look for her, since she might be on her way to help you.”

“I hope not,” Durell said. “I don’t need any help.”

“But Dr. Sinn has plans for you. For me too. The best bet is for you to agree to work for him.”

“Go through interrogation? Sit at a table and spill everything I’ve ever known? Talk into tapes, over and over again, while they probe every thought I have?” Durell shook his head. “I’m not about to be opened by a can opener, Willie. In any case, he wouldn’t just take my word for it.”

“No, he’ll put you under hypnotics and let you talk into computer memory banks. You’ve been in K Section a long time. There’s a lot of stuff in your head that he’d like to put in his records. You’ll have to do it, Sam. I mean it. I urge you to give in to him.”

Wells’ voice was low and flat. A trickle of sweat ran down his forehead. After a time, he said, “Cajun?”

“Don’t do Dr. Sinn’s work for him, Willie.”

Wells said, “Look, I’m an easy convert. For some time now, I’ve called myself a citizen of the world. I don’t owe allegiance to platitudes or patriotic slogans. It’s the people who count, man. You know how I hired out as a mercenary to the Telek rebels in Africa. I know my business. So you did me a good turn there, and after Africa I signed a contract with your company. Well, now I’m quitting. I’ve got a new boss. Don’t underrate Dr. Sinn. Look, maybe my orders are wrong. I figure you might have been protecting Madame Aspara. I see Kubischev and how he looks like you, and I remember his dossier—he’s an expert forger. Maybe he set up that phony Geneva bank account in your name. I signaled all this to Washington. It’s possible that a mistake was made, too quick a judgment made.”

“Really?” Durell asked.

Well said, “All right, you’re sore, but—”

“Yes, I’m sore.”

“You still saved my life, Cajun.”

“Don’t make me regret it,” Durell said.

The ruins came into view around the next bend of the trail. The place stood on a knoll, surrounded by tall nipa palms and a few mahoganies, the crumbled walls overgrown by flowering creepers until it was difficult to pick out the essential rectangular lines of the house. Perhaps some local pirate chief had built it, or some petty rajah in years gone by. It might have been impressive once. But now, at noon, it looked depressing and forlorn, a place for jungle vipers and pond rats, scorpions and flies. There was a square tower, three stories high, and a cracked terrace with a crumbled stone balustrade that completely encircled the house, reached by a cracked series of broad steps. Durell noted, however, that the carved teak doors were still solid, and the windows were all securely boarded up.

Aspara stumbled on a crack on the stairway, and Durell caught her and held her close to him for a moment. Ira Sanderson plodded ahead, his eyes lowered. The great doors to the ruined palace were opened by unseen hands, and they were urged on inside.

The interior was cool and dim. There was a huge audience hall, with ancient frescoes on the walls, mosaic tiles on the floor, serpentine columns supporting the ceiling. Nothing had been spared to renew the interior, creating an opulence that belied the shabby, ruined appearance of the palace from the outside. Gilded and jeweled statues of ferocious demons guarded each of the four doorways from the audience chamber. They were permitted only a glimpse of this room, however. The guards pushed them toward the nearest door, and they walked down a long, cool corridor, then down a flight of stairs where the renewal work on the building ended abruptly. The steps were crumbled and dangerous. Only an oil lamp guided them into the lower darkness. The air felt musty and decayed. The occasional doors, however, were new and solid, with firm locks. The thump of a diesel generator came from somewhere nearby, although the oil lanterns remained in use. A half-flight down gave Durell a glimpse through an open door into a modern, white-painted room bright with the glare of fluorescent lights. A bank of computers lined the wall, and a crew of white-coated technicians, men and women, attended the machines.

Durell paused and Kubischev began to chuckle.

“Yes, Dr. Sinn loves antiquities, comrade, and chooses to believe in an origin as old as the universe, claiming anointment from the fallen angels, eh? But we have people here from Europe, China, and the Soviet Union. In those memory banks are dossiers on every useful man in each intelligence organization in the world. Some have been recruited for us already. The other memory banks are being filled with data on men who can move nations; we have all their sins and follies well documented for future use.”

“Blackmail?”

“We can persuade or threaten, as we choose. Now come along. Madame Aspara, you go in here.”

The Russian defector indicated a door. Two of his armed men pushed Aspara into a small, dingy cell. She cast a despairing look at Durell, then entered obediently. The next cell was larger, with new benches against the walls. A tiny window high up in the far wall gave a greenish light that filtered through the outside vines that overgrew the place.

“All of you men in here. Strip off your clothes,” Kubischev ordered. “You will be given new garments later. But a man without his clothes feels defenseless, eh? And perhaps humiliated. Mr. Wells?”

The black man said, “Yo.”

“You come along with me.”

Ira Sanderson said mildly, “And I?”

“You stay in here with Durell and Skoll.”

“But I understood that Dr. Sinn and I—

“You understand nothing. In with you, quickly.”

Under the watchful eyes of the armed guard, they stripped to the skin, and their clothes were bundled up by a third man. Then the heavy door slammed shut, and they were left naked in the dim, greenish light of the cell.

eighteen

By midafternoon George appeared. The steel bolts slammed and the cell door swung just wide enough to let him slip in. His thin, immature figure entered with a tiptoe swagger; he paused, looked around in the dimness, and centered on Durell. He whispered softly, “Hey, hey.” Durell listened first to the bolts shot home again. Then he looked at George’s eyes under the wild mop of black hair. Too small, too bright, moving with unnatural excitation.

“Have you seen your mother?” he asked quietly.

“Mom? Hey, she’s doing fine.”

“What does Sinn plan to do with her?”

“What’s the difference? The thing is, man, you’re here, and Sinn is going to give you to me. You pig, you got her into all this, you didn’t have to do it, but you use anything and anyone to get your pig job done, don’t you?”

Ira cleared his throat. “Son, you must realize—”

The boy whirled to his naked father, then began to giggle. “You look ridiculous. All of you. Even, that stupid Russian who got himself beat up.”

Cesar Skoll didn’t bother to look up or reply.

Sanderson said, “George, if Dr. Sinn likes you, if you have any influence with him, then you must help us.” George giggled again. “Hey, man, I work for him, he likes me, sure, but he’s in the right groove, all the way.” Durell said, “Don’t bother with him, Ira. He’s coked to the eyes.”

George said, “Hey, pig, don’t get me mad at you, dig? Dr. Sinn sent me to ask you a couple of questions, right?”

“Ask them,” Durell said.

“He wants to know if you’ve thought things over yet.”

“I don’t have to think about it. The answer is still no.” George grinned. “I was hoping you’d say that, man. He wants to see you soon. Just thought you’d better be prepared for it.”

Skoll looked up, his bald head gleaming. “And me?” George snickered. “You’re coming with me right now, Russky. It won’t be a party. We’re going to peel you like an onion.”

Skoll looked at Durell, his pale eyes flat and hard like Siberian ice. “Our competition in the business may soon be over, Comrade Cajun. Sinn will not recruit me.”

“Take it easy,” Durell said.

“They will learn nothing from me. Nothing. Nyet.” George snickered again. “You’d be surprised, Russky. The boss has a few fancy tricks up his sleeve for hard cases like you.”

Skoll got up, his heavy, slab-muscled body turning slowly in the <lim light of the cell. The blood from his earlier beating had dried on his scalp and one side of his face, and there had been no water to wash and clean the wounds. George backed away warily, as if from a wild animal, and motioned to the two guards. Skoll pushed his hands outward, signaling them away, and walked to the cell entrance, his gait shambling, exhibiting his exhaustion. Then, at the last moment, he straightened his massive shoulders and walked out quickly between the armed guards, almost swaggering in his muscular nakedness. The door bolts slammed after him.

Durell tried to shut off the sounds that followed a few minutes later. He got up and climbed on one of the benches and looked out through the vine-grown slit of a window high in the outer wall of the cell. Now and then a bellow of protest, a roar of pain, a sudden scream came echoing down the corridor, muffled only slightly by the door. Ira Sanderson sat hunched on his bench, his thin, insect figure pale and white. His Ups quivered and his face was ashen.

From the window, Durell saw how the land sloped toward the shore, half a mile away. The palace stood on the highest point of the little island, and although he only had about a twenty-five degree range of vision, he spotted the ruins of a native fishing village, long vacated since Sinn took over the island. Nothing moved there, but two fishing boats had been pulled up on the beach. North of the village, mangroves and tidal swamps took over, and beyond that was a small point lined with graceful, bending palms. Heat shimmered blindly over the wide expanse of blue sea. There was no wind. Great sheets of lilac and green covered the surface of the water where the shoals and submarine growth tinged the surface of the Andaman Sea. He tried to look farther to the right, but his vision was blocked by a corner of the terrace with its balustrade.

Skoll began to scream in a high, ululating animal voice that went on and on, tom from his tormented lungs. Durell felt cold sweat prickle the nape of his neck. It could be a trick, a psychological stunt to weaken his own morale, but he did not think so. Only the worst and most diabolical form of torture could pull such anguish from the big Siberian.

“Durell?” Iran Sanderson’s whisper quivered. “What does he want? What does Sinn want from you?”

“Loyalty,” Durell said grimly. “He wants me to commit treason.”

“There is no escape from here, is there?”

“I think there’s always a way out,” Durell said quietly. “You don’t have to worry yet, Ira. Sinn needs you to work on the Buddha Stone.”

“But—” Sanderson hesitated, licked dry lips. “I never told him the truth. About the water, the erosion. Perhaps I tried to fool myself, too, in my enthusiasm.”

Durell turned from the window. “What are you talking about?”

“The Buddha Stone is really illegible. I—I improvised some preliminary translations. I simply just—made it up. To please Sinn. He frightened me, and I thought I should give him something.”

“Is the stone authentic?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps experts could do something with it, I’m only an amateur, after all. I wanted so much to make a discovery that would get my work recognized, you see.”

“It’s a fake, then?” Durell asked.

Ira looked at him with tragic eyes. “Not really. But what it really means may never be known. Just the same, Dr. Sinn can use it, he can become a god—or a demon— if he handles it properly. I wish it had never happened. And George—did you see him? Lost, poor boy. And Aspara—”

An especially piercing scream from Skoll cut through the stone walls of the cell. Ira stopped talking and bit his Up, his pale eyes gone murky. Durell returned to the window. Nothing had changed in the shimmering heat of island growth and the empty expanse of warm, placid sea. He wondered if the two fishing boats pulled up on the beach at the abandoned village were still seaworthy. You have to keep hoping, he thought. But if a man Uke Skoll could be made to cry and whimper like a whipped child—

He became aware of one last shriek of pain.

Then silence.

Insects hummed and flickered in the brush behind the palace. He stepped down from the bench. Ira was on his feet, staring at the door. The silence went on.

“Oh, my God,” Ira whispered. “He must be dead.”

Long hot shadows were cast over the segment of the island he could see from his cell window. He guessed it must be about three in the afternoon. The heat was an intolerable weight that burdened both mind and body.

Something stirred in the distant white of the sky. Durell seemed to feel the vibrations in his nerve ends before the far-off rumbling thunder touched his ears. He craned his neck to see more of the arching sky to the north. A faint contrail showed against the glaring white heat. A jet. He could not make it out, but the sound of its engines came closer, from a medium altitude, heading west-southwest. It didn’t have to mean anything. It could be a regular commercial airliner from Rangoon or Bangkok, heading toward Colombo. He Ustened to the sound increase and then fade. There had been no deviation from its course. When it was gone, he stepped down again from the bench and rested. He forced himself to breathe slowly and regularly in the stifling heat.

An hour passed.

He was at the window again, searching the sky. His angle from the cell might be unique, he thought, from any other view from the ruined palace. Something was beating the air again far out to sea. He saw the mote shivering for a moment before it moved out of his angle of vision. A helicopter? A flash of light reflected momentarily from the sky. He stared at it and wondered if he had imagined it. The heat was playing tricks on his senses, perhaps.

“What is it?” Sanderson whispered. His voice was dry.

“Nothing.”

“What can you see out there?”

“Mirages. It’s the heat.”

“What’s going to happen to us?”

Durell turned his head. “I think we’re going to find out now.”

George came back. The same two guards covered him. His eyes were not quite as vacant as before, Durell wondered at Sinn’s sense of humor in sending the boy as a messenger. George’s faced looked a bit pale.

“You’re next, Durell. Come along.”

“Is Colonel Skoll still alive?”

“I—I don’t know.”

Ira said, “Son, how can you help that monster?”

“It’s none of your business.” George bit his lip. “Let’s go, Durell.”

He stood up and George backed away to the door where the armed escort waited. One of them tossed a pair of khaki shorts to Durell and George said, “Put them on. I told him you ought to be sent out there naked—”

“Sent out where?”

“—but he won’t see you like this.”

“Where am I going?”

George sneered. “What’s the matter, pig? Afraid of getting some of your own medicine?”

Durell stared at him and didn’t bother to reply. Nothing he said could penetrate the fog that clouded George’s mind. He put on the khaki shorts and noted that no belt had been provided. Barefooted, he walked between the two PFMs down the corridor and up the winding, worn stone stairs to the upper levels. The heat, after being underground for so many hours, hit him like the flat side of an axe. He drew a deep breath and went on when one of the guards prodded him with his AK-47. George almost danced as he led the way up more steps, past the computer room and across the audience hall to an upper level of the palace. More guards were evident everywhere. Durell estimated two dozen in the palace, all armed and alert. Every window was boarded up, making the place an intolerable oven, where not the slightest stir of air was permitted. At the head of the stairs, a door opened and George stepped inside. “Dr. Sinn is in there.”

Apparently Mouquerana Sinn enjoyed the heat, despite his ponderous weight. He sat in a heavy wooden armchair, amply cushioned, with a tasseled footstool under his small feet. There was not the slightest trace of sweat on the malign face, which turned and smiled at him.

“Ah. Durell. Come in, come in.”

Standing nearby was Willie Wells. His dark face turned in quiet competence toward Durell, and he half nodded but said nothing. Two other men, Europeans, big and brawny, looked at Durell without expression. One of them murmured something in French. The other replied in a Croat dialect.

“You may be seated, my dear Durell,” said Sinn.

“I’d rather stand. What are you going to do with us?” “Do not be impatient for an answer. Mr. Wells knows my plans. He has agreed to it. Mr. Wells seems to think he is a better man than you, by the way. He has almost convinced me of that—almost, but not quite. I could use either of you in my service, but I am not sure it would be wise to use you both. May I ask you again if you have reconsidered your position and recognized the fact that I have placed you in an untenable situation vis-a-vis your former employers, K Section? You are lost, doomed, my dear sir. You are in my net. Agree to work with me, convince me of your sincerity, and I shall save you. You are intelligent, you wish to survive. Ergo, you are mine.”

“To hell with you,” Durell said.

Dr. Sinn chuckled. “You think I am a bit mad, because I believe the world is ruled by evil? Think upon it, man, and you will see I am right. However, I am most pleased, today. You are fortunate I am in a pleasant mood—almost charitable, I may say. There is much I wish to receive from you, Mr. Durell; you are a greater prize than Wells, whose duty is to kill you. On the other hand, I wish to preserve you. Mr. Wells, who has nothing but unhappy memories of his boyhood in your country, has the soul of a mercenary. He will work for me. It is already agreed. A very dogged man. But you are the more valuable of the two.”

Durell stared into Sinn’s strange black eyes. He felt the humid heat of the room, the deadness of the air, smelled the man and the odor of complacent evil that emanated from his gross bulk. He looked at Willie Wells. Wells’ eyes stared blandly back, his mouth twitching in a faint smile.

“But,” Sinn added, “how can I trust you, Durell?”

“You can’t,” he said.

“Anything you promise, I could not believe it, eh?”

“Probably not.”

“You have not truly faced your situation, I think. I believe a little activity might hone your mind toward reality. On the other hand, can I trust Mr. Wells’ new loyalty to me?”

Durell looked at the black man. “I don’t know.”

“Ah. Ah. I could put you both through various tests, of course. I could squeeze you dry. You could not resist me for very long.”

Durell shrugged. “We all have to die.”

“But I do not wish your death, my dear man.” Sinn leaned forward in his heavy chair. He wagged his finger again. “I trust Kubischev. I trust the PFM and the Cobra’s Bow. Now that I have the Buddha Stone, a hundred million men will do my bidding, do you understand? So you are not as important to me as I once thought.”

“What about Aspara?”

“The woman means nothing. My men can have her, for as long as she lasts. As for her former husband—he is still necessary to decipher the script on the stone. He is harmless. And George—” Sinn sighed. “He is a plaything, an amusement, nothing more. He is already on the road to death. A few days more or less, and then I shall be rid of the lad.” Sinn laughed softly, his piping laugh like the rasp of chalk on a blackboard. “The problem is to decide which of you may be more useful, you or Wells. I have a method to decide that. I shall not waste you as I wasted Skoll. A pity, there. It would have been amusing to learn of his department in the KGB—things that Kubischev was not permitted to know. However,” Sinn sighed, “my plan for you will be most amusing.”

“Did you kill Skoll?” Durell asked.

“We had a minor accident. It does not concern you. Look at Mr. Wells, please. It is between you two. Which of you will work for me? You, Mr. Durell, are more valuable. But your conditioning is much stronger. Your loyalty to K Section is most distressing. Such a waste. Such a pity. In any case, we shall soon know the answers. You see, Mr. Wells, as proof of his loyalty to me, has agreed to kill you.”

Durell looked at Wells. The black man’s eyes told him nothing, the strong face was bland, without emotion. “How?” he asked.

Sinn said, “My island has a limited area, and yet it is quite diversified. One of you can prove to be the better man out there. We have bush and jungle and swamp. You cannot hope to swim out to sea. Sharks, you know. And rather tricky currents. Wells has a capacity for hunting. My dear Durell, I shall set him to hunt you.”

“Out there?” Durell asked.

“Precisely.”

“What makes you think we won’t get together out there and come back to clobber you?”

“The proposition is very simple. Only one of you will be alive at the end of forty-eight hours. Ah. You look puzzled. The better man will win and work for me. The odds will not be even, of course. I am not such an idealist in fair play as you Americans. Wells will have a rifle. You will have a knife. You will also have Madame Aspara to accompany you.”

“You’re setting me free?” Durell asked.

“Yes. On the island. Wells too. If he kills you, he will have proved himself to me. If you survive, you will be mine. You may be sure of that, Durell. You cannot survive long in the world with your own people against you. As for Wells, he has already accepted the injection I’ve given him.”

“What injection?”

“A drug of my own concoction.” Sinn smiled grimly. The strange obsidian eyes, like the eyes of some demon straight from hell, told Durell nothing. “The drug will be fatal in forty-eight hours. If Wells can return with your body then, he gets an antidote and lives. If he fails, he dies, anyway.”

Durell stared at the fat man. Wells stirred at last and smiled. Durell said. “Is it true, Willie?”

“It’s true. I think I can take you, Cajun.”

“In forty-eight hours?”

“Less than that, I hope.”

“You accepted his drug?”

“You heard him. In I bring your carcass in, I get the antidote and I’m safe. I work for him.”

“And if I hold out longer?”

Wells shrugged. “Then I’m a dead man. I was sent out to get you—orders directly from our mutual boss, Dickinson McFee. The little man was so mad at you for selling out, or for what he thought was a sellout, he decided you couldn’t be left running loose. So things have changed. We didn’t have all the factors then. We didn’t know about Dr. Sinn. But that’s the deal. It’s you or me. One of us lives.” Durell turned back to Dr. Sinn.

“How much of a start do I have?”

“Ten minutes. Madame Aspara is waiting outside for you. The guard there will give you a knife. Your ten minutes,” Sinn said, “begin right now.”

nineteen

He did not seem to be hurrying as he went down the broad staircase and was ushered to the rear by the guards. After the long hours in the cell, the light outside struck him with blinding force. Waves of shimmering heat engulfed him. He saw Aspara waiting below the terrace. They had given her shorts and sandals and a white shirt. He didn’t like the white shirt. It would reflect light, be easily spotted. He realized he was already thinking in terms of the hunted, of being the quarry. No use wondering why Dr. Sinn had given Aspara into this game. The woman meant nothing to the fat man. Perhaps Sinn was amused by adding this handicap to everything else. He would have to think in other terms, Durell decided. He had to think of turning everything, anything, to his own advantage. Overlook nothing, miss no chance, no opportunity, to survive.

He began to appreciate the fat man’s irony. Dr. Mouquerana Sinn was playing on his one weakness—or so he thought. The drive, the will to survive. He had brought it all down to elemental basics. Kill or be killed. It was primitive but effective.

“Dear Sam—”

“Do you know what’s going on?” he asked harshly.

“Yes. But I cannot believe it—”

“You had better.” He turned to the guard. “I’m supposed to have a knife.”

“Djamana,” the man said. He gave Durell a sheathed hunting knife. “You had better start running.”

“Sam—” Aspara began again.

“You heard the man. Run.”

He pulled at her arm, but she hung back, her face pale, her mouth taut. “No. I’d only be responsible for your death. I’d slow you down. I can’t do it.”

“You used to hunt a little, didn’t you?”

“Long ago. As a young girl. We went to India—”

“Then let’s go.”

“But you needn’t help me—”

“Come,” he insisted.

She drew free and turned with him without looking back at the ruined palace. A footpath led down from the terrace toward a tall brake of wild bamboo. He ran quickly, seeking cover first, and the girl kept up with him in the heat, pacing herself with a light-footed speed that made her footfalls silent. In the bamboo, the path turned right, heading for the shoreline about half a mile away. He followed it, with Aspara behind him, and the bamboo soon gave way to a tangle of vines and shrubs. Another footpath crossed the first, and he turned left to head parallel to the shore, to where he had spotted the deserted village. Maybe something useful had been left there, somehow— something he could use as a weapon. Insects surged after them in thick, stinging clouds. The vines and creepers closed over their heads, making the path a ^dark-green, suffocating tunnel. He couldn’t see the palace from here. Which, in turn, meant he couldn’t be seen from there. He wished he had a watch. But when he judged that ten minutes had passed, he stepped off the footpath toward a dense patch of mangrove off to the right, closer to the shore.

“We’ll go this way,” he told Aspara. “We can’t make a sound from here on. Do you understand?”

She nodded, breathing lightly from their sprint. “He has a rifle?”

“Yes.”

“Would he really use it?”

‘'He’ll use it. He must, or he’ll never get the antidote to Sum’s poison that’s in his system.”

“And you? Will you kill him, if you can? He’s an American, a countryman—

“That makes no difference now.”

“But will you kill him?”

He said, “If I can, yes. Don’t talk now. Watch for my hand signals.”

She nodded, swallowing. “What do we do for water? And food?”

“Later.”

He turned away into the mangroves. Dark-green and black saltwater surged around the twisting, gnarled roots of the bushes. He stepped from one to the other, moving toward the beach. Aspara followed close behind. He estimated that Wells had started after him now. He could hear the lap of the tiny surf ahead and moved faster, ducking, twisting his body to avoid breaking any branches. He did not know how good a tracker Wells might be. Assume the best. Or worst. He really knew little of the man’s characteristics. Dogged, yes. His abilities as a fighting man had been honed sharp by his service as a mercenary in Africa. He found a small muddy ridge and started to step on it, then drew back, reluctant to leave prints. Aspara halted behind him.

“I can hear someone,” she breathed in his ear.

“He can’t have followed this fast.”

“It’s someone.”

He listened. He heard the beat of his pulse in his ear and drew in a long, slow breath of the sticky, humid sea air. He heard the lap and purl of the tropical tide on the sliver of sand ahead. Somewhere above and behind him, a branch broke. It was an animal. It had to be an animal.

He signaled to Aspara to follow him. She looked hesitant, appalled. “Come on.”

On the beach, he ran in the shallow water alongside the mangroves, spotting coconut palms ahead, perhaps a quarter of a mile away. The wall of mangroves screened them from the shore. Aspara ran lightly beside him through the shoals.

“Where?” she gasped. “For what?”

“You’ll see. Save your breath.”

They made it to the palm trees and turned inland across thick, rotting humus, cut across the point, came out through a cluster of wild oleander shrubs at the edge of the deserted fishing village. There were only half a dozen houses built with thatched roofs and eaves like ships’ prows, in Malay style. He pushed Aspara down until they crouched in the shelter of the greenery, watching. He couldn’t spot anyone. Beyond the little cluster of houses were the two fishing boats on the beach. He looked back up to the solitary knoll that crowned the island, where the palace stood. He could just make out the top of its walls above the jungle growth between them. Something flickered there, like glass reflecting sunlight. Was Mouquerana Sinn watching, waiting, enjoying the game he had begun? But it was not a game, Durell thought. It was in deadly earnest. He felt a little stir of warm air against his face. Already his mouth felt parched. But there would have to be a spring or a stream nearby, to account for the little fishing village that had once been established here.

“Sam—dear Sam,” Aspara whispered. “What are we going to do?”

“Find a safe place to hide,” he suggested. “No point in trying to run around and around the island for the next two days. We’ll snug down and let him come to us. Force him to make the move.”

“He’s clever and dangerous. If he finds us—”

“Then I’ll be waiting,” he said.

But not like this, he thought. Not with just the knife. He needed other tools, other weapons for survival. His mind moved ahead, considering the problems, turning it this way and that. He looked back and saw nothing but the wall of greenery, the narrow strip of sand, the nodding palms, the more distant mangroves they had just traversed. The smell of swamp mud touched his nostrils. A small breeze moved along his cheek, but it was as hot as the touch of an iron. On the still, placid sea, he saw a vagrant cat’s paw, and then it disappeared. When he drew a deep breath, it was like swallowing molten iron.

“Let’s go.”

The nearest fisherman’s house from the shelter of the oleanders was about fifty feet away. He got up and ran across the debris, with Aspara at his side. They reached the shadows of the far wall and threw themselves down in the deep shade cast by the westering sun. Nothing happened. A fish jumped in the sea nearby, splashing lightly, leaving widening circles of ripples. Another touch of hot, scorching breeze moved across his face. He eased forward on his belly, came up to the ladder that led into the sagging stilt house, and signaled Aspara to stay behind. He climbed fast, ducked inside. A smell of death and decay smote his nostrils. A dead dog lay in the back of the one-room house. The village had been vacated in a hurry, which was what he had hoped for. There was a clay oven for charcoal, an empty five-gallon can, a single ragged blanket. Mice scurried in the rotting thatchwork overhead. He picked up the can and the blanket, searched for a weapon, found nothing suitable, and climbed down again.

Aspara watched the line of brush beyond the house. “I thought I saw something.”

“Where?”

“There. But I’m not sure. Maybe it was a bird.”

“Maybe.”

He went through the village quickly, wasting no time. He had the feeling that Wells would try to get this over with in one fast effort, before settling down to the tedium of patient tracking and hunting later. The high-prowed boats on the beach on the other side of the village were all hulks, partly charred by deliberate fires, with holes stove in their sides. Useless. He looked for canoes, outriggers, in the brush. Nothing. He found an old paddle of solid teak, which he thought he could use as a club. He gave it to Aspara to carry for him. She took the blanket and the five-gallon can too, leaving his hands free for the knife, if necessary. The whole place, silently brooding in the heat of late afternoon, smelled of death. He didn’t like it. It made him uneasy. He let himself think with his instincts, his belly, rather than his brain. It was a primitive situation. He needed primitive reactions.

The last boat on the beach looked more promising. He ran across to it, halted in its shadow, glanced again at the dense foliage that fringed this eastern shore of the island; then he vaulted aboard. There was some old fishnetting, which he took, and then a heap of line, which he quickly coiled in a large loop and slung over his bare shoulder.

As he straightened beside the leaning mast on the beached boat, the first shot slammed into the rotted wood and showered splinters over his shoulders and face.

twenty

His reaction was swift and sure and powerful. His first leap took him to the far side of the canted boat. He heard the report of the first shot a split second after the slug hit. The second shot tore a chunk of the boat’s old railing as he vaulted over it and dropped to the sand and warm shallow water beneath. He fell to his knees, scraped his right leg on a plank lying in the sand, and called, “Aspara?”

“I am here.”

“Can you get around the stern?”

“Yes. Where is he?”

“Some distance away. Maybe up a tree.”

The sun was in his eyes as he searched the low profile of the island’s growth. The third shot smacked harmlessly into the sand near the boat’s high prow on the beach. Aspara came scrambling through the water around the stern and dropped, gasping, on the sand beside him.

“Are you all right?”

“He missed. Overeager. Too sure of himself.”

“Can you see him?”

“No.”

He measured the distance to the fringe of brush and coconut palms beyond the narrow strip of sand. There was a small rift in the wall of green bushes, and then he saw the slight glimmer of water running in a tiny stream behind one of the leaning stilt houses. His guess had been correct. The fishermen who had lived here before Mouquerana Sinn took over the island would have settled near fresh water. He had to fill that five-gallon can, he thought. He lay still, and listened, and let his instincts command.

“Is he coming?” Aspara whispered. “Does he think he hit you?”

“We’ll soon find out. Stay here.”

“He—he didn’t fire at me, Sam. He could have hit me. I was exposed to him on the other side of the boat.”

“That’s right, but—”

“Let me go first,” she urged. “Maybe he won’t consider me as his target.”

Three shots suddenly slammed in rapid succession into the sand near the bow of the boat that sheltered them. The reports of the high-powered rifle sounded about a quarter of a mile away. As the last echo died, Durell gathered himself and raced for the line of darkly shadowed foliage. He was almost there when another shot caught him. He felt a tug at his ankle, tripped, fell, rolled over and over, and came up in the thick, prickly undergrowth. He looked back and saw Aspara running after him, carrying the blanket and tin can, her hips swaying in the awkward way that women run. No shots followed her. His ankle burned, and he flexed his leg and saw blood over his foot and swore softly.

“Oh, Sam . . .”

“It’s all right. Just a scratch. A nick.”

With the foliage hiding them, they made it to the little stream without any further attack. Durell washed his ankle and saw that the wound was truly only superficial, but it would be painful later. Then he helped Aspara rig a length of the rope around the tin can as a shoulder strap with which to carry then water easily. He did not stop to drink until he had arranged the line and the netting and the blanket in a tight pack that he could sling over his shoulder. He gave the broken piece of paddle back to Aspara, to carry as a club.

“Sam, I—I feel desperate.”

“No more desperate than Willie Wells, remember. He has that poison in him. He knows that Sinn will show him no pity if he falls.”

“It’s like a nightmare.”

“Worse.” He tried to grin. “It’s for real.”

Her face was pale. Her large, dark eyes showed signs of fatigue already. He looked at the sun and judged there were still more than two hours before the sudden tropic night came to help them. He put his hand under her elbow and helped her to her feet. Her body swayed against him, and he felt the warmth and softness of her and remembered the poya nights they had shared. He knew that she was remembering too, and he softened his voice.

“We’ll look for a place to hole up now. He’ll be heading this way, but he’ll be careful, worrying about what we might have picked up here. He won’t be so sure of himself now, and that will slow him down.”

He started off, following the little stream, walking on the flat stones and in the sandy shallows, carefully pushing through the vines and creepers that made a tunnel out of the route. Insects plagued them, biting and stinging, swarming in increasing numbers as evening drew near, getting in their eyes and ears. Every few steps he paused to listen, but there was no sign that Wells was close by. The little stream went only a short distance and ended in a low-lying swampy area that seemed to extend all across the northern perimeter of the island. He recalled that the junk that had brought them here from Ceylon had landed on the southwest shore, which had been forested. The swamp here was a problem. The mud clung to their feet, sucking them backward, making Aspara slip, fall, and stumble. Each step of the way was a struggle against the tangled vines that closed in around them. Now and then he had to use the knife to hack a passage through the barriers ahead.

Every fifty paces he paused to look back and listen. But the swamp was full of small sounds from the creatures that lived here, large and small, birds and amphibians, and he could not tell if any of the noises behind them might be the sounds of Wells’ passage after them. He swore softly. The sun was only a dim guide through the leafy canopy overhead. The smells of the swamp were nauseating.

Then suddenly he came upon a rotting plank walk among the mangrove roots, a path that someone had laid down many years ago. The local people that Sinn had eliminated, he thought. He stood up on the end of the walk and paused to .pull the girl up after him. She looked exhausted, covered with mud, scratched by branches, bitten by the myriad insects that swarmed hungrily around them when they stopped and which followed them in eager clouds when they pressed on.

“Sam . . . ”

“It’s all right. We’ll find ourselves some cover before dark.”

“I feel he’s right behind us, or ahead of us, all around us.”

“He’s only one man,” Durell said.

“But he has the rifle.”

“We’ll manage.”

Aspara wondered at Durell’s confidence. She knew she was disheveled and probably ugly-looking in his eyes at this moment, and she pondered this man, to whom she had made love on two occasions now. She had accepted him, although she knew he would come and go, that nothing was permanent with him; this big man, for all his capacities, his strength and tenderness, his brutality and sentiment, was essentially homeless, a wanderer, and yet he was at home anywhere in the world, able to adjust, to blend with his surroundings, capable of dealing with enemies both natural and man-made in just about any environment.

She both envied and resented him. Long ago, as a small girl, she remembered going on a tiger hunt with her father, in India, and she never forgot how the huge beast had led them deeper and deeper into the dark forests, knowing the way, moving with powerful, machinelike precision, only occasionally glimpsed, with those great green malevolent eyes. Durell, this big, brutal, lithe man, was like that tiger. He seemed to enjoy being hunted, playing this terrible game, pitting his wit and his strength, his cunning and his training, against an enemy possessed of overwhelming odds in the hunting rifle. Overwhelming? She remembered how the huge beast had suddenly sprung, out of a darkness that was nowhere, and took her father down, clawing, growling, the huge fangs ripping at her father’s throat, releasing the life blood in a great red gushing torrent. . . .

Following Durell on the rickety plank walk, she suddenly slipped and fell to one knee, shook her head, and lifted herself again. Durell had not paused at all. He didn’t even look back at her now. He was moving faster, heading for the western shore of the island.

She had practiced yoga for most of her adult life, both in body and mind, and she knew she could use prana to make her body keep up with him somehow. It was a matter of mental and physical discipline. But deep inside, something trembled weakly within her. All her life, she had put her faith in the gentle and peaceful teachings of the Buddha. Suppose this stone, this new declaration from Buddha himself, stated other precepts, perhaps indicated that Sinn was right, that the world was always in the grip of evil and always would be a domain of darkness? Where would her faith be then—and the faith of a hundred million others? Her world, yes, her mind and her spirit, would be destroyed. And what would Durell—this stranger whom she had clasped in her body, accepting and yearning and crying out for him—what would Durell do- about it?

Everything in her life seemed to have gone wrong: her marriage to Ira Sanderson, her son George, everything. The ambition she had nurtured in politics and statesmanship, her struggle to rise in the vortex of politics that engulfed her new, beloved nation—it all seemed a hollow effort now. Other men and other powers sought to make a mockery of independence and dignity. There was Colonel Skoll, who probably died in agony. And Durell, whose purposes she could not guess, sometimes. And this cold malignancy, this gross, fat, evil thing who called himself Dr. Mouquerana Sinn.

She wanted to stop and weep. Her legs suddenly felt watery, her muscles trembled, she ached and pained all through her body. Her spirit felt dead. She could go no farther. She was only a burden to Durell, and she did not know why he had accepted her.

His brooding strength appalled and frightened her. He was like a machine, like that tiger in India, all-knowing, wise, his blue eyes hiding a blaze of power and will. He would not be easily defeated. But it was hopeless. What could they do?

Ahead of her, Durell paused on the end of the broken-board walk. The placid green sea shone ahead of them. The sun was a huge, intolerable bail of heat low on the empty horizon.

Empty?

She saw him point, and looked in that direction.

A small boat drifted languidly on the oily sea. Two men were in it, watching them.

Willie Wells could feel the poison moving in him. It wasn’t bad yet, only a minor ache along his nerves, a dullness in the nape of his neck. But he knew he would never be at the peak of efficiency as he was now. Each minute, each hour, that the poison remained without its antidote, he lost a bit of his strength, some of his power, minuscule at the moment, but growing steadily, numbing his senses and sapping at his strength. It had to be done quickly, he thought. Now. Or tonight. He had plenty of time left, of course. All day tomorrow, all of tomorrow night. But how would he be then? He couldn’t guess. No use taking chances. It had to be now, as soon as possible, or Durell would slip away from him while he weakened steadily, lost his cunning, lost the determination to live.

Dog eat dog, he thought. It had always been that way with him, all through his life, even as a kid in the wrecked slums of Philadelphia. He had tried to put those early years of frustration and anguish out of his mind long ago. As an adult, aware of himself, of his strength and his intellectual capacities, he thought he had succeeded in shoving those rotten memories out of his thoughts, washing himself clean, so to speak, in a lonely and fierce independence. Hatred had helped. It gave him a measure o: strength to carry on through those early years, although later that strength turned out to be false and undependable. The behavior of the people he had met in the army in Vietnam, and later as a mercenary in Africa, turned out to be surprising and unpredictable. Those who should have understood and sympathized with him as a brother turned out to be his worst enemies. On the other hand, a man like Durell had helped and encouraged him. Even the chief of K Section’s operations, that strange little man in gray named General Dickinson McFee, had proved cooperative in giving him a boost upward. But now there was this, and you were back to basics again, the fundamental problem of staying alive.

Willie Wells sighed. He knew he had lost the first round. The poison that Dr. Sinn had injected in him ate like the slow drip of some vitriolic acid. From his perch in the tree, he had watched Durell explore the deserted fishing village and the boats, picking up this and that, getting water, the length of rope, the blanket, the club. The woman didn’t seem to be slowing him down any. Wells wondered if he could use the woman somehow, but then dismissed it. Durell was a professional. His prime motivation here was survival. He would sacrifice the woman, if necessary. He tried to put himself in Durell’s place for the next twenty-four hours but could not imagine himself in such a situation. Was his nerve going? He slid his fingers along the smooth, warm stock of the rifle. A good machine, he thought. He had plenty of cartridges, but the rifle might not be enough, there would have to be something more to trap Durell, this man who had been his friend. He shook his head, felt perspiration run stinging into his eyes, and dried his hands on his thighs to keep a better grip on his weapon. How had he missed? It should have been a clean shot, seeing Durell on the deck of the wrecked, beached fishing boat. He had never missed such a shot before. Maybe, he thought, there was something in him that kept him from wanting to kill Durell, and some trick of the subconscious had made his aim go bad. He hoped it wouldn’t happen again. Dog eat dog, he thought again. No time now for sentimentality. No profit in allowing the mind to play tricks on him. It was kill or be killed. He knew that Durell would show him no mercy, if Durell had such a possibility.

Wells moved slowly through the late afternoon heat of the island. Mouquerana Sinn was probably watching from that tower in his palace. Enjoying all of it. A perverted sense of amusement, that monster had. But his offer had been good. Sinn had played very effectively on his old memories, recalling the bad days of childhood and his early youth in the black ghetto, making him remember the bad times in Vietnam, building on his resentment, promising, promising him everything he had ever dreamed of achieving back in those rotten days.

All that stuff about Sinn being a messenger of evil was crap, of course. The monster was insane. Mad, yes, but not stupid. He was like a dark malignancy sitting up there, back in his palace, ruling this island like some god—no, not a god, a devil.

Willie paused to drink sparingly from the canteen of water Sinn had allowed him to have. The rifle felt heavy, and one finger of his left hand was numb, tingling and prickling. He wondered what sort of poison had been injected in him. Something that affected the nervous system, maybe. He worked his left hand anxiously, rubbing the thumb, clenching and unclenching his fist. After a moment, the strange numbness went away.

He moved on. He was on slightly higher ground than the mangrove swamp into which Durell and the girl had vanished. Sooner or later, they would have to come out of there, or the insects would eat them alive. Nobody could stand it in there for very long. He guessed that Durell would try to make for the western coast of the little island, exploring the area for a place in which to hole up for the night. Probably he was planning to set a trap. That would be like Durell. He would offer bait, expect him to come in with another rush, and fall into some kind of snare. He had the rope, the blanket, the club. A pit, maybe. Like an animal trap. He’d have to watch where he put his feet with every step he took. That would slow things down. But he had time. Time was on his side, wasn’t it? Forty-eight hours, Sinn had said. No, two hours had already gone by, at least. He had no watch. It was one of Sinn’s malicious little tricks, to take the watch away from him. To balance the odds, the monster had said, giggling.

Suddenly he wished Durell dead with all his heart and mind. He felt defeated. It was hopeless. Durell was too good at this sort of thing, too quick and clever to be caught.

Good, Wells thought. Keep hating him. Maybe next time you get him in your sights, you won’t want to miss.

twenty-one

Durell looked at the small powerboat idling offshore. The two men in it were PFMs, Dr. Sinn’s men, and they carried their AK-47s with an expert ease. One of them spotted him and Aspara and nudged the other, and they laughed, the distant sound drifting over the heat on the water. They waved their weapons, urging Durell back from the end of the little plank walk. Plainly, Sinn had his eye on them and had encircled the little island with guards to prevent any possible chance of escape by sea. He turned back with Aspara, to a beach littered with broken, rotting palm fronds from a past typhoon.

The men in the powerboat roared off, presumably to report to Dr. Mouquerana Sinn.

“We’ll head south,” he said. “The land is just a bit higher there. If we could find a cave—”

“Wells would find us there,” Aspara said.

“I’d want him to, if I have a little free time before he shows up.”

“Will you set a trap?”

“It’s our only chance.”

“I don’t see any chance at all. Even if you win against your countryman, we are still caught on the island, we are still in Mouquerana Sinn’s hands. Would you agree to work for him, after all this?”

“He knows I won’t,” Durell said.

“Then what can be his purpose?”

“Amusement. Revenge. I don’t know.”

“You think he will execute you eventually?” “Eventually, yes. After he squeezes me dry of all I know about K Section operations.”

“And me? What do you think he will do about me?” Durell did not reply. He did not want to tell her what he thought she faced on this lonely little island with Sinn and his men. He had seen no other women here. Perhaps Sinn had no use for women himself, as he had said; but the other men, the PFM terrorists and the guards, would be hungry for girl-flesh, more eager than cautious, and especially hungry for a woman like Aspara. She would be used by them until she died, sooner or later. He said nothing to her question, but she was an intelligent woman, and she surely could anticipate what was planned for her.

They came to the forested southern end of the island shortly before the sun went down. From a tree-covered rise, Durell could look down on the small cove and dock where they had landed from Jaffna, what seemed years before. The junk was still tied up there. He could see part of the trail that wound up through the wooded slope toward the old palace on its knoll near the center of the island. Some armed men moved along the trail, carrying crates and bundles unloaded from the vessel; and more men were gathered along the dock and around the few palm-thatched stilt houses that comprised their barracks. Durell stared at the area for a long time, while Aspara looked backward for any sign of Willie Wells. The guns down there were tempting. Perhaps in the night, in the cover of darkness, there might be a chance to do something. Then he remembered it was a full moon, or just past full. The sky was cloudless and apt to remain so. Moreover, these were picked men, very alert, very capable.

He filed the thought away as a possibility and turned back to where Aspara stood guard behind him.

“He’s there,” she said quietly. “I just saw him.”

“Where?”

“Sitting down. His back against that tree. I don't want to point or look directly at him.” Her voice was soft and calm. “I don’t believe he thinks he can be seen.”

Wells was just an irregular shadow hunched down against the bole of the tree. The setting sun was almost at the horizon now. A long track of blood-red water led to the west. Durell saw the momentary glint of light on the steel barrel of Wells’ rifle.

“Why doesn’t he shoot now?” Aspara asked.

“Maybe this area near the dock and the junk has been ruled off limits,” Durell said. “We don’t know all the rules of this thing. Mouquerana Sinn may have just neglected to tell us the boundaries in which this game can be played.”

Aspara shuddered. “You said it’s not a game.”

“No.”

Durell was waiting for something. He wasn’t sure what it was, but it was there, ready to be found, if he knew when and where to look. He could not explain the feeling he had. He moved off to the left, where the thick boles of trees protected his back. He pulled Aspara with him into the shelter of the woods. The camp by the wharf consisted of one long, barrackslike building on stilts, with a thatched roof and several smaller houses under leaning palm trees. There was a small beach to the left of the cove, and a plank landing there, presumably for the power boat that kept circling the island as a guard. The faint smell of cooking fires drifted up through the dense tropical growth of wild bamboo, and it stimulated his stomach juices, making him aware of his hunger again. He counted at least twenty men, with two apparently rated as officers, and then gave it up and turned aside.

“Let’s go,” he told Aspara.

A second small stream ran toward the western shore of the island, midway back up the way they had come. He had missed it coming south, because they had chosen an inland path for cover against their pursuer, but by circling closer to the mangroves that lined the beach, using the tangled growth for new shelter, he came across the little tunnellike aperture where the fresh water flowed.

The moon was up, and everything around him made a phantasm of ebony and silver. In two hours, he built the trap. It was slow work, and he had to pause frequently to listen, rest, and listen again. Somewhere out there in the black pattern of shadows was Wells, patiently waiting, hunting him. Wells would be annoyed now, because of his first misses, but he would not let his impatience make him careless. Although the night made it easier to make an invisible approach, it also helped to shelter Durell and Aspara. Nothing made a good target in this strange pattern of dense blackness, with shafts of moonlight streaming down like spotlights through the mangrove branches overhead. He worked patiently, digging at the mucky soil with the pieces of wooden oar he had salvaged from the fishing village. It was hard, backbreaking work, exhausting, and he felt the need of food more strongly with each passing moment. Now and then Aspara spelled him while he went on a wide, circling sweep of the area. There was no sign of Wells nearby. Inland, the island lifted a few feet higher, and there was a dense tangle of broken branches, bleached bone-white, where past storms and tidal waves had tossed broken trees and wreckage in a long barrier line just at the inner edge of the mangrove swamp. The little stream issued from under this barrier, and at this point, it seemed impossible to climb above it without circling north along the shoreline to flank it. He found a kind of burrow here, a natural hole in the tangled tree trunks and branches, and explored it carefully. The ground inside was dry. It went back about eight feet, and was about three feet wide, and its entrance could easily be hidden by dragging a few of the looser limbs free of the barrier wall and covering the mouth of the entrance with them.

Refuge for the night, he thought. He drank lightly from the stream, although the water seemed a bit brackish. When he returned to the pit he was digging, he told Aspara to spread the blanket in the burrow and try to sleep.

“What will you do?” she asked.

“I’ll finish this.”

“But he won’t be so foolish or careless as to fall into it, Sam, will he?”

“No. He’ll be expecting it. He won’t be caught in this one. But I’ll dig another.”

“You can’t possibly, with just sticks and a broken paddle.”

“It has to be done.”

He used his knife to sharpen stakes and chose a sapling that had plenty of spring to it, then he lashed the netting he had salvaged to other spring branches, using the heavy coil of rope he had found aboard the wrecked boat. The moon lifted higher and higher in the night sky. Although the heat of the sun was gone, the air still felt heavy and humid, and there was little change in temperature and no relief. Aspara helped as much as she could, sharpening the stakes, lashing the trap-line when he brought his weight down on the limb to curve it downward.

The snare was arranged so that if it were tripped by anyone approaching their burrow, the sapling, net, and stakes would all come loose, snatching up the victim and carrying him aloft and helpless, tangled in the bag of the net. He needed to use only half of the net itself for this snare. When he was finished finally, bathed in sweat, he deliberately made only a halfhearted effort to hide his work.

Aspara said, “But he’s sure to spot it.”

“With a little effort, yes. I want him to.”

“But then, all this work is for nothing!”

“We’ll build another. The idea is that he’ll avoid this, think the path is safe from here on, and come on toward us. He’ll not be looking for a second booby trap. And if there’s time, I’ll build still a third.”

It was close to midnight, he judged, when the second snare was ready. He had used all of the net and most of the rope. At times, he had insisted that Aspara get some sleep, but she refused to leave his side. He felt dulled by fatigue, dirty and unwashed, and hungry, exhausted by the tension of constantly listening for Wells’ approach. Maybe Wells had been concealed nearby all this time, watching everything, anyway. The man was quite capable of playing that sort of game, amusing himself by letting Durell use up what energy remained to him. Aspara found it difficult to accept the brute strength that Durell exhibited during his steady toil. She shuddered at the last trap, another spring snare that would let loose two rude javelins cut from saplings, sharpened to a point with the knife and triggered to fly with venomous force when tripped. But at last it was over. He had done all he could.

“We’ll rest now,” he told the girl.

“I couldn’t.”

“You must. Tomorrow may be even worse. He’ll be getting impatient by then, really worried about the poison in his system. He’ll be anxious to gain some margin of safety by having a few hours to spare. You’ll need your rest.”

“And you?”

“We’ll take turns.”

The burrow was about a hundred feet upstream from where the little creek emptied into a spread of sand that bordered the quietly lapping sea. It felt warm and dry in the tiny enclosure. Now that the work was done, he felt the inevitable droop of weariness in all his muscles as he sat cross-legged near the entrance. Aspara sat on the blanket behind him. His ankle, where Wells’ bullet had nicked him, had begun to ache, although the slight wound was clotted and dry. He could not see Aspara, but he could feel her warmth and hear the light sound of her careful prana breathing. From where he sat near the burrow entrance, he could see the slight fall of the stream into the mangroves. It was like looking out through a tunnel of leaves. The barricade of dead broken branches and tree trunks above them made small creaking noises now and then, as animals and nocturnal lizards moved along their devious ways. It was a better place than he had hoped to find, hours ago, when this nightmare began.

He tried to think of anything he might have overlooked. He had disarmed Willie Wells once before, on the hillside above the walauwa near Kandy. Wells would not be taken by surprise that way again.

“Sam?”

“Try to sleep.”

“I cannot. I don’t want to.”

She moved to the burrow entrance and sat beside him. He felt her shiver suddenly and knew she was thinking of that strange malignancy in his tumble-down palace up on the knoll, half a mile away. He kept listening to the sounds of mice and snakes in the dead tangled brush of the storm-tossed barricade over his head. He watched the stream, running silver in the shafts of moonlight that pierced the overhead leaves. Wells had to come up that natural tunnel of foliage to get at him. He had the knife. Wells would have to get quite close, before he could use the rifle. Should he sit it out here for the next day and night? By then, the poison in Wells—if, indeed, there was poison in the man, and he saw no reason to doubt Dr. Sinn’s evil humor—would be peaking toward its lethal level. The man would be desperate. He would come in a rush, firing again and again, blindly. But in this cul-de-sac, such a rush might succeed.

“Sam?”

“It’s all right. We’re safe, for now.”

“The night seems endless.”

“It’s half over.”

“Sam, I’m sorry. About George, about the way I turned on you. About everything.” She paused. “No, not everything. I think of Negombo and our lovely nights together with—with much warmth.”

“I do too.”

She kept her voice to the lowest whisper, and because of this, she had to lean close to him, her weight against his arm, her breath moving against his cheek and ear. He put his arm around her and held her closer. She moved willingly into his embrace. He kissed her briefly, then again, longer this time. Overhead, in the thick tumbled brush, the mice rustled and paced, hunted and escaped their hunters. They came together suddenly, with a desperate, quick passion that neither could deny. Her breasts were warm, firm, and eager under his touch. He pushed her back gently on the old blanket they had salvaged. Her body was receptive to him, as if anxious to make amends. She clung to him in despair that yielded to a low, stifled moan; even in their lovemaking, she did not forget the need for silence. It was as if she needed to make up for something by begging for his love, pleading for him to possess her.

Some of it was her desperation, her clinging to' life, a denial of all that Mouquerana Sinn had proposed. For himself, he did not think; about it. Durell accepted her love and gave his, and when it was over, he kissed her gently, touched her closed eyes with his fingertips, and sat up to face the entrance to their burrow again.

There came a snapping, cracking sound, almost like a pistol shot, as the farthest of his traps suddenly went off.

twenty-two

He had not really expected it.

He slid out of the burrow and stood up, his shadow lost among the shadows of the brush barrier above and on either side of him. The little stream trickled toward the mangroves, tunneling through the black leaves and stubborn vines. Slowly, softly, he took the knife from his belt and held it ready in his hand. He waited for the second trap to go off. Nothing happened. The last device, the sharpened stake javelins poised and tied by the old cord age, was untouched. He listened. He heard nothing. Even the creatures of the swamp and brush had gone silent. Time stretched out into the singing eternity. He heard his pulse in his ear and drew a long, slow and silent breath to check it. Someone should have been screaming by now, he thought. No matter how good Wells was, some sound would have come from his throat, some instinctive exclamation of surprise, if he’d suddenly been yanked up ii that net, jolting and rocking among the treetops, tangled like a fish in the fisherman’s snare.

But he heard nothing.

Perhaps it was an animal, then. But there were no animals large enough on Sinn’s island to trip the trigger of his trap. A large dog, perhaps. But he hadn’t seen any dogs on the island, either.

It had to be a man.

Question. Was the man dead? Had his neck accidentally been broken? Or was he so good, so professional, that even in the surprise of the trap, he had maintained his silence?

He listened.

Nothing.

“Sam?”

Aspara’s whisper was just a breath behind him.

“Go back.” He did not turn his head to look at her. “Stay in the burrow. You’ll be safe. I’ll return soon.”

“No, Sam, don’t go—”

“I have to.”

His progress was measured in inches at first. Every twig presented a potentially lethal hazard. He moved to the left along the front of the twelve-foot-high pile of dry tangled brush, and when at last he found himself far enough away from the tunneled banks of the little stream, he moved forward down the slight slope, heading toward the sea. He did not know how long he took to reach the mangroves and ease himself forward, contorting his body to avoid low, gnarled limbs, probing for a foothold on the knobby roots. Now and then he stopped to listen, but there still was not the slightest sound from the snare. When he had gone fifty laborious paces, he paused and heard the purl and lap of the moonlit sea among the mangrove roots. From a great distance came the slightest hint of wood-smoke, probably from the fires lit at the wharf where the junk was tied up. Then through the pattern of black and silver shadows, he saw something that did not fit the design at all.

He stood there motionless, taking several minutes to identify the object. It was only twenty feet away, hauled up on the farthest reach of the mangroves, an artificial shape, ovoid, painted a dull yellow. He worked his way forward again, watching the object. Now and then he paused to listen again. Nothing. The mangroves near the shore were stunted, some of them damaged and bent into strange shapes by the monsoons that had piled up the brush barrier inland. No one could have climbed a tree, Wells couldn’t be hiding up there, waiting for him with the rifle.

He came closer to the open water and at last identified the thing that didn’t belong here.

A life raft.

He seemed to hear the low, rumbling thunder of a jet, somewhere far back in his memory. And the distant, uncertain flapping sound of an airborne chopper. Imagination? He remembered his cell, recalled standing on the bench, studying the island, when he had seen a glint of something high in the sky to the east. He looked at the life raft again. It was hardly big enough for two men. Almost a child’s size. Had it been here before, and had he somehow missed spotting it? He didn’t think so. It was a new arrival on Dr. Sinn’s island. One man? Two at the most. Why? From where?

He did not dare go nearer to it, until he checked the snare. He was deeply puzzled as he worked his way carefully back up the little stream toward the trap. Perhaps he was walking into a trap himself. He felt the presence of someone else here in the black tangle of mangroves. He ducked low under a vine covered with the pale stars of wild, night-blooming orchids, took another step upstream. He was near the pit now. He had heard it spring, heard the snap of the ropes, the fall of the net, the upward surge of the saplings swinging the bag high among the trees with its catch. He stopped. He went on again.

He finally reached the place and looked up.

The bag was full.

The net hung about ten feet above the pit in which he had pinned it, and the sapling he had used as a spring pole was bent perilously tight. A foot, a leg dangled through the net openings. He stood in the shadows, watching. He could not see Wells’ rifle. Had the man held on to it? Was he able to aim it, fire it, even if he was tangled in the bag? Or had he dropped it in his surprise? Durell studied the

black shapes on the mucky ground. He saw nothing that even resembled Wells’ rifle. More, he noticed something else. The leg that dangled through the net, showing a space between boot and slacks, was white.

Not black.

Not Willie Wells.

Durell said softly, “Yo.”

“Samuel?”

“I don’t believe it,” Durell said.

“Did you set up this damned thing?”

“Keep your voice down.”

“Is someone looking for you?”

“Yes. Your hit man. Willie Wells.”

“Oh, my.”

“You bet. Willie Wells. He’s pretty good. You fired me and sent him after me. And he’s somewhere nearby.”

The man in the bag said, “Listen to me. Listen, Samuel. I came myself, personally, because I realized it was all a terrible mistake.”

“How did you get here?”

“Jet. Chopper. You saw me?”

“Are you alone?”

“I thought I owed it to you to straighten this out personally.”

Durell said, “I still can’t believe it.”

“Get me out of this damned thing, Samuel.”

“To hell with you,” Durell said.

“Samuel, I know you must entertain some very hard feelings over what has happened, but you obviously have managed to survive so far.” The voice in the net paused. “Major H. K. D. Dhapura-—the man we thought belonged to us at the Royal Lanka Hotel, but we now know is from the Ceylon Security Police—he traced you and your party to Jaffna. And checked out the junk. We flew a pattern over the Andaman Islands and spotted it here. Mr. Dhapura couldn’t come with us—no jurisdiction over the Andamans—”

“Shut up,” Durell said.

“What?”

“You talk too much. Didn’t you hear me? Your Willie Wells is somewhere around here, trying to kill me.”

“That’s all right. I shall explain it all to him. I’ll explain the mistake I made—”

“You can’t, now. It’s too late. He has to kill me, or he’ll die himself. He has only thirty-six hours now.”

“Samuel, cut me down. Let me help you.”

Some of the long-suppressed rage in Durell came out in his voice. “General McFee, you can swing there until hell freezes over. Now shut up.”

Maybe he should have expected it, Durell told himself. General Dickinson McFee, top man of K Section, the gray presence himself, the man who reported in his sober, objective way to nothing less than Joint Chiefs and Sugar Cube—the White House. The man who issued assignments to field agents, who assessed and evaluated the results of Synthesis and Analysis—yes, he’d come himself. His sudden surge of anger faded. He wanted to laugh at the image of that impeccable little man, with his deadly, gimmick-loaded blackthorn stick, squashed into a humiliated ball, entangled in a net in a tree, on a nameless, miserable stinking little islet in the Andaman Ocean.

He stepped back into the shadows, away from the pit and the sprung snare. Let him hang there for a while, he thought. He had worked for McFee for more years than he cared to remember, learning the business, following orders, playing tag with death and deceit, traveling the world around, probing into all the deadly corners of the earth, its cities and its jungles, to get what the little man wanted. He had never refused an assignment, and he could not remember when Dickinson McFee had ever given him any thanks. He never expected any thanks for the work he did, but on the other hand, he had never expected the sort of swift judgment and betrayal he had suffered in the last few days. The rules of the business were harsh and unforgiving; he had always known that. Yet he had never anticipated the day when McFee would send a killer after him on the basis of forged evidence. He had kept his anger and his sense of outrage under control until now. Well, the old man had gotten himself into a pickle of his own making. Let him sweat it out up there. At least for a few more minutes.

He halted again near the second trap he had built. He had expected Wells to be on the lookout for the first snare. And he had hoped that Wells, having found it, would assume there were no others and fall into the second trap. The pit and the taut net, knotted to other bent saplings, was still intact. Beyond were the sharpened javelins, the third and last trap, close to the entrance of the burrow under the piled brush where he had left Aspara.

He smelled smoke again and lifted his head suddenly. The sharp, acrid scent was stronger than before. He thought he heard a sudden crackling ahead of him, near the burrow. Alarm made his nerves jump. For a moment, there was nothing to be seen. The high barrier of storm-tossed brush made a dark wall ahead. The stream was to the right, running under the living foliage there. Then a vagrant shift of air, too light to be called a breeze, brought the smoke straight at him, and at the same moment he saw the first avid, flickering tongue of fire.

Wells had set the brush barrier aflame.

Dismay and anger kept him motionless for a moment. Aspara was there. If she stayed in the burrow under that huge mass of tinder-dry brush, she would be burned alive. The entire area for fifty feet on either side was utterly explosive. He cursed, grudgingly admitted that Willie Wells had out-flanked him. Even as he halted, he saw another tongue of flame suddenly leap high, jumping to the skeletal arms of a long-dead tree. The fire raced along the smaller branches, picked up new fuel from the storm-wracked wood there. Suddenly the whole quality of the night was changed. Where there had been patterns of ebony and silver, there was now a hellish red glow everywhere, making the shadows shift and jump and change shapes from second to second.

He moved to the right. He thought he heard McFee, in the net high among the trees behind him, shouting. He paid no attention. The crackling of the fire was rapidly increasing to a wild roar. No need for silence now.

“Aspara!”

He reached the edge of the little stream and smashed barefooted through the thick brush, hacking at a stubborn vine that lashed itself around his shoulders and chest. The knife was still quite sharp.

“Aspara!”

He could not see her. Where was Wells? He must have posted himself somewhere above, where he could see the burrow opening. He had to be waiting somewhere, rifle ready, waiting for them both to be smoked out of the burrow under the huge pile of brush. Both he thought. Wells did not know he had come out of there. Durell checked himself. The red glare of the fire grew more intense, erasing the dark shelter of the night. It made the brush and mangroves waver in an insane pattern of black and red He coughed as a downdraft of the smoke reached him. Where in hell was the man? He tried to put himself into Wells’ mind as he searched the area. Everything was moving and blowing, changing shape and pattern in the growing red light. The flames had started off to the right, across the little stream. That was where the fire now leaped highest. He saw the dark shapes of living trees beyond the brush barrier. Up there. Somewhere up there. Where he could have a clear view of the burrow opening when the fire burned off more of the brush. Was Aspara asleep Had she yielded to exhaustion so that even this inferno couldn’t wake her? Durell jumped the stream and broke through the tangle of vines. He headed for the far right end of the brush piles. Shapes and patterns danced a around him like insane, leaping demons straight from hell. There, he thought. But the shape of a man became only tangled, vine-covered tree, an illusion in the red and black glare.

“Durell!”

He checked himself. The sound of his name was strong and urgent. Triumphant. It came from above and a little behind him. He whirled, searching the tangle of vine grown trees overhead. Wells was there, a dark pattern of leaning shoulder, alert round head bent forward, straddling a solid limb while he stared at the head of the stream where the burrow now showed as a dark hole in the brush barrier. Durell weighed the knife in his hand and swore again. No sign of Aspara yet. Wells might shoot at the first movement down there, without waiting to identify his target. He saw the rifle, held steadily, ready, the dark hand on the trigger, the round head bent to look through the sights.

Wells still thought he was in the burrow. His back was to Durell as he watched the dark little entrance. Durell measured the distance. Fifteen feet up, no, less than that. Make it twelve. The black man straddled the limb with his legs dangling down. About twenty feet from where Durell stood. He tensed himself, gathered his muscles, and went forward in a rush. Wells heard his approach. The round head turned, the rifle started to come up, the eyes widened, glinted white in the fire glare. Durell jumped. He reached high for the dangling leg, grabbed at Wells’ ankle, and pulled at it as he came down. There came an involuntary shout from the other man as he felt himself yanked sidewise from his perch. His heavy, powerful body tumbled down, dragged by Durell’s grip on his leg. Durell thought his shoulder was yanked from its socket by the effort. He did not let go. He came down hard, his fingers slipping, his arms wrenched painfully. Wells hit the ground with a heavy thud. His rifle went flying to one side. He rolled, shouted again, tried to pull his leg free of Durell’s grip. Durell was flat on his stomach, struggling to hold the man from pulling away. The rifle was off to the left. Wells heaved himself that way, his arm far outstretched. His fingers clawed for the weapon. Durell had his knife in his left hand. He did not want to use it. He pulled himself forward, grabbed at Wells’ arm, shifted his grip again, and slammed the knife into the soft, mucky earth half an inch in front of Wells’ grasping fingers.

“Jesus, oh, you bastard . . ."

“Give it up, Willie.”

“But how did you—”

“McFee is here.”

Willie Wells’ dark eyes went wide and round, showing bloodshot white around the black iris. “Hell. Don’t put me on. I’m going to kill you.”

“Forget it. That job is all over.”

Wells suddenly heaved, tore loose from Durell’s grip, lunged on all fours through the muck for the rifle. He got his hand on the barrel and swung it hard at Durell’s head. Mud splashed. Overhead, the fire had leaped to the living treetops. The barrier wall of driftwood was a solid mass of flames now. No time to think of Aspara in there. He felt the stock of the rifle graze his head, endured a moment’s blankness, grabbed for the knife again. It would not come loose from the ground where he had driven it in. Probably caught on a bit of root. He swung hard at Wells’ jaw. His knuckles smashed into the man’s broad nose. He hit him again. Wells began to club him with the rifle, struggling to his knees. They hugged each other for a long, desperate moment in a deadly embrace.

“Give it up.”

“I—can’t.”

“We’ll get an antidote. Understand?”

“Only if—I kill you.”

“We’ll get Sinn together. You and me. Right?”

“Not—possible.”

Willie’s teeth gleamed white in the red glare of the fire. They swayed back and forth on their knees, seeking leverage. The rifle was only two feet away. Neither dared break the grips to lunge for it. Durell felt the man’s strength, like a bar of iron. He could not break Wells’ hug. He felt his ribs being slowly crushed inward. The air was squeezed inexorably from Ids lungs. Smoke drifted over them, choking, acrid, and heavy. It tasted of dry rot. The flames made a vast roaring noise like the forced air of a blast furnace. The heat smothered them.

Wells looked desperate. Great beads of sweat shone on his dark face. He tried to lock his hands behind Durell’s back, almost succeeded. Then his grip suddenly slipped, and Durell heaved forward, throwing the man backward. Wells’ legs bent under him. His head hit the rifle barrel and his eyes rolled, looking for the grip again, and one hand thrashed out, reaching for the weapon. Durell slammed his forearm across Willie’s throat and brought all his weight to bear down on the larynx, controlling the final impulse to crush it and kill the man. He didn’t want to kill Willie Wells. He didn’t want to waste time.

“Willie, can you hear me?”

“Yuli.”

“Truce. See McFee for yourself. Right?”

“A—trick?”

“No tricks. A deal. Otherwise, I kill you.”

Durell brought more weight to bear on his forearm. It squeezed the breath from Wells’ throat. The other’s body thrashed wildly. His eyes began to pop. A strangled sound came from him, half laughter, half a cry of defeat and despair.

“Let—go!”

“A deal?” Durell asked.

“Yuh.”

He eased up very carefully. Wells did not move. His left hand groped for the rifle, and he caught it up in a sweeping movement that lifted it from the swampy muck. With the gun in his hand, Durell sprang back, up on his feet.

Wells lay on his back, knees drawn up, chest heaving. His dark eyes stared his hatred. Durell swayed. He was almost at the limit of his own strength. Another minute or two of struggle, and the toll of the last few days would have cost him his life. He let the rifle rest in the crook of his arm and moved back two steps, away from the black man.

“Sam! Sam?”

It was Aspara. She had escaped from the burrow, stumbling down the stream. At the same moment, the great barrier of driftwood suddenly collapsed with a roar that seemed to encompass the entire island. A great blast of heat rolled over them. Sparks billowed into the sky, and the flames roared higher. The night was turned into a red hell.

twenty-three

The fire drove them back toward the sea.

Durell released General McFee from the net snare. When McFee stumbled and fell, Durell did not move to help him up but continued to make his way through the bush, with Aspara walking quietly beside him. McFee, after the first few moments, went beside the dark figure of Willie Wells and talked quickly and earnestly. Snatches of their conversation touched Durell as he led them out of the mangroves, but the roaring fire behind them blotted out some of the small man’s words.

". . . shocking behavior. But I can understand Samuel’s attitude—”

Wells said, “You gave me the orders . . . doing as you said . . ."

“Of course, my boy, of course. Creditable . . . But then, you see, our premise . . . based on faulty data . . .”

“I was going to kill him.”

“Yes, yes. But we learned . . . false Geneva bank deposit.. . manager there, a M. Fouquier . . . knows Durell. . .became curious because of Samuel’s overseas call . . . had the signature checked by experts . . . Kubischev . .".

“He’s here too.”

“What have you learned about Mouquerana Sinn?”

“. . . gives me the creeps, the—"

Durell carried Wells’ rifle and helped Aspara as they walked. Her long hair had become undone and swept down her shoulders and her back. Her shirt was torn and muddied by their flight all through the long afternoon and night. He wondered what the time was. The moon was well down toward the west now, huge and orange, and he estimated it was still two or three hours before dawn touched the opposite side of the island. There was an urgency in the way he moved that overrode his weariness. Just a bit more, he told himself. A few more hours, that was all. He was worried about the fire, which seemed to be spreading south toward the wharf area, where the PFMs had their barracks. Another tongue of flame had jumped a long-abandoned rice paddy and was raging inland through the thickets of wild bamboo that grew along the trail that led up to the palace from the little harbor. Smoke hung heavily over the shore and drifted slowly out over the Andaman Sea.

“We’ll cut around to the north,” he said bluntly. “We can cut back to the palace from there. The fire seems to be spreading, and Sinn will have most of his men out fighting it down here. So we’ll hit him from the other side.”

Wells said, “You’ll never get in, Cajun. He’ll still have enough men around him—and Kubischev—to guard himself.”

Durell looked at the black man thoughtfully. “Then we’ll have to fake it, if you feel strong enough.”

“That stuff in me is beginning to work.”

“I’m not surprised. How long do you think you can hold out?”

“I don’t know. A few more hours anyway. Then I’m going to need that antidote.”

“We’ll get it for you. General?”

McFee said, “Anything you’d like, Samuel.” He sounded remarkably subdued. “I’m simply glad to have found you alive—although you really could have cut me down out of that net a bit sooner. What can I do?”

“You’ll do anything I say. When I tell you to move, you jump. Understand? And don’t be too humble or too anxious to atone for your error, General. I’m only interested in getting out of here alive.”

“But we want to get this Mouquerana Sinn.”

“Maybe you do. Not me. I’ve quit.”

McFee said softly, “You’ve quit K Section?”

“K Section quit me. You quit me. Fair enough?” “Samuel, you can’t be serious. The business is your whole life.”

“Yes. It almost was,” Durell said grimly.

“I have apologized. I shall do so again, if you wish. It was a terrible error. I—I was outraged by the evidence against you. I didn’t wish to believe it, but it was all hard data, we could not ignore it.”

“You could have given me a hearing.”

“If I had left you to join Dr. Sinn, you see, it would have seemed too late. Please try to understand my own problems in the matter. It truly looked as if you had defected and escaped to join Sinn.”

“To hell with it,” Durell said.

He spoke briefly and crisply as he urged them all along the narrow beach to the northern point of the island. Behind them, the fire grew like a hungry, wild animal trying to devour everything in its path.

“We need more weapons.” It was half an hour later, and they were crouched in the thickets within twenty yards of the shadowed north facade of the palace. The moon was down, but the sky was a red glare overhead from the fires leaping across the island. The roar of the flames drowned out every other sound, and the draft that fed the fires in the mangroves and bamboo made a hot wind that blew at their backs, while overhead in the sky sparks and cinders leaped and gyrated against the carmine smoke. Durell pointed toward the back terrace of the threatened palace. “That one, there.”

“I see him,” McFee said. “Let me have your knife.”

“No, we’ll do it as I suggested.”

“He’s a jumpy one.”

“It will be all right,” Durell said. “Willie?”

“Right.” The black man grinned briefly, but great beads of sweat stood out on his face.. “I can make it.”

“Pick me up, then,” Durell said. “Across your shoulders, like a sack of meat. Take the rifle too.”

“Cajun, there was nothing personal in the whole messy thing—"

“I know. Hurry it up.”

Wells’ strength was still more than sufficient to sling Durell’s weight up and across his shoulder. Durell let himself go limp, arms and legs dangling, as if he were some sort of killed prey. Wells muttered, “Hup. Here we go. That guy is getting more nervous.”

The PFM who patrolled the terrace of the palace was casting anxious eyes to right and left, worried about the flames that ate at the island’s vegetation and inexorably came his way. It occurred to Durell that the man had good reason to be nervous. If the fire effectively cut across the island’s waist, they were all barred from escape aboard the junk moored at the opposite end of the land. The man carried his AK-47 as if he were ready to use it at any suspicious shadow.

From the foot of the wide stone steps leading to the weed-grown terrace, Wells called softly, “Yo, brother!” He heaved Durell’s dead weight to a more comfortable position on his shoulder. “Go tell the boss I’m back with the prize.”

The PFM turned, eyes wide with momentary alarm. His rifle jerked upward. Then he recognized Wells and saw his burden and began to grin slowly while he jabbered away in some local dialect. He pointed to the fire and yelled something.

“I’m not interested in that,” Wells said. “I set it to flush this bugger out of his hole. My fault, maybe, but no sweat. Gimme a hand here, huh? This carcass is heavy.”

The PFM did not understand English any more than Wells understood his spate of Tamil, but the man guessed what was wanted and lowered his rifle and came closer. Wells swung his own weapon in a savage, one-handed blow against the man’s head while Durell slid from his shoulder. The PFM reeled, his mouth open to shout an alarm. Durell hit him, sent him down, while Wells kicked the man in the jaw. They both heard the bone break. Without a pause, Durell scooped up the AK-47 and turned. McFee and Aspara ran up the broad marble steps. He tossed the rifle to McFee.

“Two to go. Inside. General, you go in through that door. Aspara, stay with him. Willie, come with me.”

“Why split up?” Wells asked.

“I’m going to look for Colonel Skoll.”

“Skoll is dead.”

“Maybe not.”

Durell still had his knife. Wells weighed his rifle, hesitating. “I’m more interested in finding Dr. Sinn. He’s slippery. If he thinks that fire threatens him, he’ll vanish like smoke.”

“Superstititous?”

“He got to me a bit, yes,” Wells said. “He has an aura around him—I don’t know how to say it—”

“I felt it too. Let’s go. Skoll first.”

“Waste of time,” Wells said.

But he followed Durell around a comer of the crumbled, weed-grown terrace, hugging the far balustrade. A door stood open here, and from within came the dim glow of a light. Durell listened to the thump of the generator from nearby.

“Hold it. We’ll get the power first. I think that fat cancer needs an elevator to get up and down the steps.”

“Right,” Wells said.

The generator, with its diesel power, was located just below the terrace, in a small stone building. Durell vaulted the balustrade, landed in soft weeds, heard Wells after him. A guard walked around the comer of the generator house and saw them. The man yelled. There was no help for it. Durell used the knife, sinking it home into the terrorist’s ribs. The man dropped his rifle, grunting, and sank to the ground. He carried a clip of three grenades in his belt.

“Let me,” Wells said.

He took the grenades, chose one, kicked open the generator door, and pulled the pin. He threw the grenade inside. There came a yell of shock from another terrorist within. Then Durell and Wells threw themselves flat as the housing burst in a roar that threw stones, dirt, and twisted metal high in the air. The concussion rolled over them in a tremendous wave. It left their ears ringing. Almost at once, Durell was up and on his feet, putting the knife away. He had the AK-47 as his weapon. They vaulted back onto the terrace together, came to the open door, slammed through. Dim shouts echoed through the old palace. Durell took a flight of steps three at a time, with Wells beside him. Through the door opposite, which stood ajar, they could see the red glare of the fire burning in the night across the island.

“Down in the cellars,” Durell said.

“What about Sinn? I need that stuff for the poison he put in me.” Wells was sweating. His mouth drooped. His dark eyes looked rebellious. “It’s every man for himself.”

Durell nodded. “All right. Get him.”

“What’s Skoll to you, anyway?”

“He’s in the business,” Durell said. He took one of the two remaining grenades. I'll use this one.”

Wells licked his lips. “I can’t kill him until I get the stuff from him. If he can be killed at all, that is.”

“You’ll make it.”

Durell left him and ran across the main entrance hall. No one was in sight. He guessed that most of Sinn’s men had rushed off to fight the fire. Down the stairs, the light from the flames was cut off, and he moved through inky blackness. The corridor smelled foully. He felt his way along, counting the doors to the prison cells, and in a few moments came to one that was open.

“Cesar?” he called softly.

There were no guards here. He thought he heard someone take a deep breath. He wasn’t sure. He wondered what had happened to Ira Sanderson and his son George, and then he stepped into the open cell, gaining a little light from the high window that admitted some of the fire’s glare.

“Skoll,” he said gently.

There was a snort, a rush of animal strength, a collision that threw Durell back against the stone wall. He smelled the blood and sweat on the tortured man and fought off the great bearlike arms that tried to strangle him.

“It’s me. Cajun. It’s all right, Cesar.”

“Eh?”

“We thought you were dead.”

The Siberian’s weight was still enormous, pinning him to the wall. Durell did not want to use force on the man in any way. “Let up. I’ve come to get you out.”

“What is happening? They thought they killed me, the devils. That Kubischev did his damnedest to strip me to the bone.” The Russian’s breath went in and out like a great wheezing bellows. “Da. Da. You are the Cajun. You have a gun? What started the fire?”

“Wells did that. It’s a long story. Come on, we’re getting out of here.”

“Da. Good. My feet—they are in bad shape—very burned. My fingernails—three pulled out.” There was a spitting sound in the dark. “Also three good teeth. For no reason. Kubischev knew I would tell nothing, nothing at all. I—” He began to spit blood again and dropped his arms, stood swaying. His bald head was outlined against the small cell window. His face was a dark mask, thrust forward angrily to flare out of slitted, puffed eyes. “Da. We will go.”

“Can you walk?”

“I will walk. I told you about Siberia, when I was a boy. I will do anything. I want Andrei Kubischev.”

A voice behind them said, “You have him, Colonel.”

Light jumped at them from the torch held in the defector’s hand. Kubischev looked enormous behind it, a menacing shadow that blocked their escape from the cell. In his right hand he held a long-barreled pistol, like a Luger. He loomed alone, with no one behind him in the corridor. Everything about his shape and manner implied tremendous confidence and arrogance.

“I see that you survived, Durell,” the Russian said. “I told Dr. Sinn that you would. I warned him. I told him you would kill Wells and come back to kill him. And now you have set everything on fire. I warned him about you.”

“Where is Dr. Sinn now?”

“You will never find him. Never see him again. He has his ways. He cannot be destroyed, that one.”

Skoll growled. “You scum, you traitor, you sold yourself to that spawn of hell.”

Kubischev laughed. “Save your breath, Colonel. It will be your last, this time. You are a hard one to kill, I see. I shall make certain of it myself, now.”

Durell was aware of Skoll shambling forward, his arms swinging like a great ape. He was a bit to the left. He needed no other signal. They jumped Kubischev together, with Skoll roaring, “He’s mine! Leave him to me, Cajun!” Kubischev’s gun roared, echoing like thunder in the narrow underground passage. He fired again as he went down under their combined weight, struggling. He suddenly screamed as Skoll’s massive paws caught at his throat. Durell rolled free to retrieve his AK-47. Acrid smoke drifted down the corridor. In an exhibition of tremendous strength, Skoll dragged Kubischev to his feet, picked him up bodily, and hurled him against the stone cell wall. His curses in Russian came in an endless stream as his naked body pounded again and again at the other man.

Durell scooped up the pistol.

“Hold it, Cesar. Don’t kill him yet.”

“I must. I will,” the giant panted.

Durell drilled the pistol muzzle against the nape of Skoll’s neck. “Do as I say. Can you understand me, Cesar?”

“Eh? You turn his gun on me too?”

“Let him live a bit longer.”

“Why?”

“Ask him about Dr. Sinn. Where did he go? And more important, where is the Buddha Stone?”

“Ah,” Skoll breathed. “Yes. I was too angry.” He hauled the other Russian to his feet. “Well, you putridheaded piece of muck? Answer the questions!”

An unintelligible garble came from Kubischev’s broken mouth. The electric torch had fallen to the stone floor, and in its bright glare, the man looked only semiconscious. Blood suddenly gushed from between his twisted lips. His eyes rolled, showed white. Cesar Skoll let out a long, sorrowful sigh.

“He is dead.” He released the man, and Kubischev crashed to the floor. “Give me your pistol, Cajun. He made a mistake with me. I shall not repeat it with him.”

“A bullet through his head?”

“You owe this to me. Never mind your American morality. True, he did you great harm, when he worked for Dr. Sinn and framed you. He almost had you killed, eh? But he has hurt me far worse. Once I trusted him. He was my friend. And he betrayed me. Your gun, Cajun.”

Durell gave Skoll the Luger. The big Siberian swayed on his feet for a moment, staring down at the man. Kubischev was already dead, his neck broken. But Skoll aimed carefully at the back of Kubischev’s head and fired once. The shot slammed back and forth and gave way to the sound of flames crackling somewhere above him.

“Let us go now,” Skoll said. “We will finish our work here. There is much to clean up, but I believe Kubischev was right. We will not find Dr. Sinn.”

twenty-four

It was two days later.

“We couldn’t find him,” Dickinson McFee said. “Samuel, I have apologized several times already. Must I express my regrets once more? I know you have had a most difficult time. When you are feeling better, we will talk again. After all, you humiliated me, leaving me in that net.”

“You deserved worse than that.”

“So you are resigning from K Section?”

“I’m thinking about it,” Durell said.

“Nonsense. Impossible.”

“Why not? Wouldn’t you send someone to spot me again someday?”

McFee moved quietly around the large hotel room in the Royal Lanka, back in Colombo. The ceiling fans stirred the warm, humid air around, and from outside came the sounds of traffic, cars and motorcycles and buses, all the noises of normal pedestrian crowds moving to and from the fort district. Durell had been in bed a long

day and night, and most of this day too. He had slept, waking only to eat. He had finished most of a bottle of bourbon. The little gray man had seen to it that he lacked for nothing, and Durell enjoyed the reversal of their normal roles. McFee had found a gray suit and from somewhere, perhaps on the helicopter that had come in to pick them up from the burning island, he had retrieved his knobby blackthorn stick. Durell remembered very little of their escape. He watched McFee waggle the blackthorn stick at him, and he stiffened slightly.

“Don’t point that at me. I know all the lethal gadgets you have in it.”

“Samuel, my dear man, I need you.”

“I didn’t notice that lately.”

“I need you to find Dr. Sinn for me.”

“Go find him yourself. You seem to enjoy taking the field on your own.”

“I should not have done that,” McFee admitted. “But surely it shows the measure of my concern for you.”

“You son of a bitch,” Durell said. “You ordered Wells to kill me. You wanted me dead. You didn’t even try to believe I was innocent. There’s nothing more to say.” McFee went on, “I cannot accept the fact that you are simply sulking. Do you want more money? We can rewrite your contract. Do you want to move into other operations? We need someone in—well, no matter. You can write your own ticket.”

“I’m not that valuable,” Durell said.

“Ah.”

“But I’m curious.”

“Ah,” McFee said again.

“I just think you owe it to me to tell me what happened finally on that island.”

“Are you still working for me?” McFee asked.

“No.”

“Then the information is classified.”

“All I know is,” Durell said flatly, “that I had to drag Skoll up out of the prison-cell alley, and then something hit me. I was looking for you and Aspara. I wanted to find Dr. Sinn. I wanted to find the Buddha Stone. I wanted to get at his computer tapes.”

“Ah,” said McFee, a third time.

“You sound as if you’re sitting in a dentist’s chair Don’t be so smug. I can find out.”

“I suppose you can. First, of course, Skoll is alive. He i in the General Hospital at Ward Place, not far from th Burmese embassy. I never thought a man could surviv what he went through. He is most grateful. But it wouL have been better—McFee waggled his deadly walkin stick “—if he hadn’t killed Kubischev. It would have bee: interesting to talk to that man.”

“You’re greedy,” Durell said.

“As for the computer, I’m sorry to say it was smashed—presumably by Dr. Sinn himself. The tapes were gone So was he. A most elusive gentleman. We combed the island and the sea, afterward.” McFee paused. “Does he really consider himself a messenger of Satan?”

“I don’t know. Maybe he’s insane. But I don’t think so. Certainly he’s brilliant. And dangerous. He’ll give us trouble another time, I’m sure of that.”

McFee said, “How could he have escaped?”

“In a puff of smoke smelling of brimstone,” Durell suggested.

“I see that your spirits are reviving.”

“And the Buddha Stone?”

McFee looked regretful again. “Alas. Gone.”

“Alas. How, gone?”

“The Indian authorities are conducting a quiet search for it in the rubble of the old palace, of course. But it will not be found. Mr. Ira Sanderson insists the heat of the fire would have cracked and destroyed it. He made another confession to me, by the way.”

“I know,” Durell said. “The stone was illegible, completely useless, and he’d faked a partial translation of it to please his captor, Dr. Mouquerana Sinn. That’s all there is to it. The Buddha Stone remains a myth, a fable, an unattainable goal. And maybe it’s just as well.”

McFee said, “Are you still quitting?”

“Yes.”

McFee sighed. “Well, we have Mr. Sanderson back. Everything else was lost on this job. My fault, of course.” Durell didn’t answer.

He watched the sunlight lowering through the wooden shutter-blinds of the hotel room. He felt drained, as if something had eroded his spirit. The traffic outside went on, people lived, worked, ate, made love, as they always did and always would, as long as the world of man lasted. It was a thought that these days now held the possibilities of a finite end. The world of man might not last forever.

He said, “So Dr. Sinn got away with his computer tapes and dossiers. He’ll still have an organization, then. He’ll go on trying to peddle information, the data that every nation in the world seems to need, or thinks they need, in order to survive.”

“We have been warned, at any rate,” McFee said.

Durell drew a deep breath. He did not want to ask his next question. He felt regret, even sorrow, although in his business he had long learned to put such things aside, to be professional about grief and losses. He watched the fans turning against the ceiling. The air was hot, stifling. It would soon be night again. The bottle of bourbon was almost empty. He drew another breath. His ribs hurt. He ached all over.

“And Willie Wells?” he asked.

Dickinson McFee pointed the blackthorn stick at him again, and Durell said, “You little bastard, what about Wells?”

“Alive,” McFee said. “Do you care?”

“Yes, I care. How did he make it?”

“We found the antidote. Ira Sanderson knew where it was. We weren’t sure it would save Willie’s life, of course, but it did.”

“Where is he?”

“I sent him away. On the first plane. He’ll be touching down in Washington, just about this time.”

“I wanted to see him,” Durell said.

“Why?”

“I’m not sure why.”

“Well, you will have to go to Washington, if that is what you want. Make up your mind.”

McFee waggled his stick once more, walked to the hotel room door, and went out.

A Sinhalese doctor came at dusk, put on a few lamps, muttered and poked and bandaged and applied salves and ointments and gave Durell a shot of penicillin. During the ten minutes the doctor worked over him, Durell sat up on the bed and picked up the telephone and dialed Aspara’s number at Negombo. He waited through several long, empty rings that seemed to echo inside his head, until the instrument suddenly clicked and he heard her voice. “Yo. Sam here.”

“Dear Sam?”

“Are you all right?”

“Yes. Quite well. As well as can be expected. Is it all over now, Sam?”

“For now, yes. Nothing more to bother your land of Sri Lanka. I believe. How is Ira?”

“He is at the embassy. Making out reports. He is being transferred next week, to somewhere in Africa, I think. I am not sure.”

“He’s not with you?”

“There is nothing left, I told you that, Sam.”

“What about George?”

“He is with me.”

“Awake and alert?”

“He is sleeping.”

He sat up straighter. “Aspara, you must keep him there. I’m driving out tonight—” he saw the doctor shake his head in disapproval "—and I must talk to George.”

“Can you not leave the poor boy alone?”

“I must talk to him,” Durell insisted. “It’s possible that he knows where we can find Dr. Sinn. He must know. He’s part of Sinn’s outfit.”

“Oh, no . . .” Aspara whispered.

“Keep him there. Please.”

There was a long silence.

“Very well,” she said. “I will be waiting for you.”

Mr. Dhapura said, “Sir, I am happy beyond belief, and your good fortune at surviving is incredible. Sir, you have my deepest admiration. I only sorrow that your work on behalf of my country cannot be publicized, and in fact, it had been decided that you had best leave Colombo as soon as you are physically able. Mr. Durell, sir, in certain government circles they fear that you may actually be an embarrassment. Explanations have been drawn up, ready for the press, as to the events in which you were involved. It would be awkward, you see, sir, if you were available for official questioning, and if you had to admit your capacity on behalf of the US—”

“I have no official capacity,” Durell said. “Not anymore.”

It was night, but the hotel room in the Royal Lanka was as hot as it had been before. Mr. Dhapura put on a pair of tinted, heavily framed glasses and peered at him with his round, brown face. Durell had found a fresh dark-blue suit in his luggage, a washable doubleknit, a new striped shirt, a dark solid necktie, and had changed into buckled shoes. Freshly showered and shaved, he felt infinitely better. He moved around the room, picking up his wallet and loose change and currency and keys. Mr. Dhapura’s eyes followed him with mild curiosity.

“Sir, you are going out?”

“Yes.”

“Does the doctor think it advisable?”

“No.”

“Perhaps another day of rest, sir ... I have obtained tickets, for you on a CAA jet flight from Bandaranaike Airport for tomorrow morning, sir. You understand, I regret the necessity. But there have been so many strange rumors flying in government circles—and Madame Aspara has not been available for a cabinet conference, to determine the official communique regarding the purported Buddha Stone and this Dr. Mouquerana Sinn—”

“There is no Buddha Stone,” Durell said. “You don’t have any cause for alarm. I’ll be back to check out. It’s just some unfinished business, that’s all.”

“Sir, I am concerned. My responsibilities, sir—”

“I promise you, everything will be quiet.”

“Will you see Colonel Skoll in the hospital?”

“Perhaps.”

“Tell me, sir, this Mr. William Wells—”

“He’s flown back to the States, as you know. General Dickinson McFee and I will fly out too, as you suggest.”

“That is good. Very good. I regret what may seem like an inhospitable attitude—”

“I understand.”

Mr. Dhapura—Durell could still think of him as the manager of the Royal Lanka, not as a major in the security police—waved his small brown hands. His eyes were enigmatic behind his black-rimmed, tinted glasses.

“I shall expect, sir, to see you back here in time for the scheduled flight. I bend the rules a bit, you see. For your sake. Are you sure you feel well enough to venture into the streets?”

“I’d feel better if I had my gun back.”

“Oh, sir. No, sir.”

Durell said, “I didn’t think you would.”

He took his rented car from the garage behind the Royal Lanka and drove north out of the city across Victoria Bridge and out on Road 3A toward Negombo. At nine o’clock in the evening, the traffic was reasonably fight, and the trip took less than thirty minutes. The little fishing village was asleep beside its old Dutch canals and the softly splashing moonlit beach. Fishing nets hung on high poles to dry near the row of high-prowed catamaran fishing boats hauled up above the tide fine. The moon was not as full as it had been three days ago, but its pale light still reminded him of the nightmare of Dr. Sinn’s island in the Andamans.

Only one light shone inside the house, in a room toward the front, facing the beach. He parked behind the old Rolls-Royce touring car. She must have retrieved it from where it had been abandoned above Kandy, although it would need a considerable amount of body work to restore it as it had been. He felt the long, sleek hood. The engine was cold. He looked to see if the ignition was in the lock. It was not. Finally he walked around to the front door and rang the old-fashioned thumb-screw bell.

Aspara opened the door almost immediately. She had been waiting for him. She wore a silver-embroidered saree and a silver-filigreed comb in the back of her long, silken hair, which was done up in an extravagant knot on the nape of her neck. She had never, he thought, looked more beautiful or exotic. She held out her hand to him.

“Dear Sam.”

Her face was pale, her fingers were cool. Something strange moved in her eyes. She was afraid of him now. He knew at once that their relationship had changed, perhaps permanently. Nothing would ever be the same again.

She said, “I did not think you would be up and about so soon.”

“Things have to be done. Is George at home?”

“The poor boy has been so ill. Just a few moments ago. He has not said a word to me, ever since we were taken off the island by your friends. He—he has withdrawn, taken himself somewhere else. He is completely changed.”

“I’d still like to talk to him,” Durell said.

“I wish you would not trouble the boy.”

“I told you. It has to be done.”

“Dear Sam, the boy is very disturbed, he acts utterly crushed, very subdued—”

“He’s a drug addict,” Durell said. “Dr. Sinn recruited him that way, was his source of supply. Now the supply is cut off.”

She clasped her hands before her. Her great eyes sorrowed. “Yes, I can see that. I am not sure what you can get out of him. I’m afraid. Yes, I’m afraid for him. Not a word to me, nothing at all. As if he’s thinking—thinking of something terrible—”

Durell said, “Aspara, Dr. Sinn managed to escape with all his computer tapes and records. He had taken over Madame Hung’s organization, a private espionage outfit that was totally immoral. If there is no crisis in the world at the moment, Dr. Mouquerana Sinn will manufacture one. Data, information, those are his commodities. I need to know, Aspara. It’s true that George was never very high in the organization—he was simply a useful pawn now and then—but whatever facts he may have, I must have, too. I need a thread, something to hang on it, to go after the man.”

“George cannot help you. As you say, he was never important to Dr. Sinn.”

“We can’t tell,” he said urgently. “It could be some lit-— tie thing. A hint, a clue. Enough to give us a start.”

She paused. “Yes. I would feel better if that monster were not loose in the world.”

“Then let me see George.”

She drew a deep breath. Her eyes were tragic. “Very well.”

The room in the back of the cottage looked as if a wild animal had gone into a total frenzy in it, silent and utterly destructive. Durell moved inside quickly, aware of Aspara’s soft, sibilant intake of shocked breath. The closets were empty except for a battered suitcase with customs tags, a pair of dirty socks, a paint-stained pair of blue jeans, sneakers, a scarlet-flowered shirt. Durell snapped open the suitcase, tossing it on the bed to do so. Aspara started to speak, then was silent. Inside the suitcase, amid a jumble of dirty linen, was a small tin box containing several syringes, a needle, an empty aspirin bottle that contained only a fine dusting of white powder.

The window was open.

“Where would he go?”

Aspara said, “The beach, perhaps. Or the canal. I am not certain.”

“Stay here.”

“No. I must go with you.”

He did not waste time in argument. He went out the back door, circled the garage shed where the battered Rolls and his own rental car were parked, and went through a brake of tall bamboo. The beach was just beyond. Moonlight flooded the placid sea. He walked with a long impatient stride, and Aspara half ran to keep up with him. The fishing nets made graceful, shadowed patterns, hanging from their tall poles dug into the sand. There was phosphorescence out on the sea where fish jumped and splashed. The nets were only a few hundred yards to the left. Durell turned that way, his eyes searching for the boy’s slight figure. He was filled with a mixture of pity and anger—pity for Aspara, for what she might be feeling; anger at an impending loss, a certain knowledge that he would have to start all over again with nothing in his hands to guide him. There would surely be grief and suffering and death before he heard from Dr. Mouquerana Sinn again. It was a cycle that the world had known before —and would know again.

He halted suddenly.

“That’s far enough, Aspara.”

“But where is he?”

“Did you tell him I was coming?”

“No. But he might have been listening, when you telephoned.”

“I’m sure he listened. Don’t look at him.”

Aspara put her hands to her mouth as she stared to where he pointed. Something dark and slender dangled limply from among the graceful, lovely pattern of fishing nets hanging from the poles near the water’s edge. It moved slowly, rotating from the rope around its neck. “George?” she whispered. “George?”

“He did it himself,” Durell said gently. “We’ll probably never really know why.”

Aspara stared at the hanged body of her son.

“Please go away, Sam.”

“Will you call the police?”

“I will attend to everything. Please go.”

He walked back alone toward his car.

twenty-five

Colonel Cesar Skoll looked up at him from the hospital bed near Ward Place. His grin was savage. “You are certain he hanged himself?”

“I’m certain.”

“Perhaps we can get a lead from the PFM, this Cobra’s Bow, or from some of the men Mr. Dhapura took into custody.”

“I doubt it.”

“You are up against a blank wall, then?”

“I have nothing,” Durell said.

“Well, we are both still alive.”

The hospital room was quiet, immaculately clean, air-conditioned against the humid heat of Colombo’s night. Durell stood quietly at the foot of Skoll’s bed. The Russian had an IV needle in one thick, massive arm, a tube up his nose, a splint on his other arm, bandages that swathed his long, powerful legs, more bandages on his scalp and chest. The room smelled of ointments. His fingers, where he had lost his fingernails, were also in bandages. The KGB man was as helpless as Durell had ever seen him. Only the ice-blue Siberian eyes seemed normal, watching Durell’s stolid face.

“Comrade Cajun, it is a truth that sometimes we win and sometimes we lose.”

“Yes. But it’s only begun,” Durell said.

“Da, Comrade Cajun. I will not be in this damned bed for long. It is terrible here. Naturally, my own people will come to fly me back to Moscow for treatment there. They would not like to see me here for long. But perhaps, until morning—could you possibly get me a drink of vodka? Just a sip would be a help.”

Durell put his paper bag on the table beside the hospital bed. “I’ve brought you a whole bottle, Cesar.”

“Ho. If you were not an imperialist, capitalist spy, I would say that there is still hope for you, Cajun.”

Durell said, “I’ll have to leave Sri Lanka too. Mr. Dhapura’s orders.”

“You will work again for your little General McFee?”

“I suppose so.”

“He would have had you killed.” The Russian grinned. “Why not work with me? You would be safe, Never, never, would I send one of your comrades to kill you.”

“Is that right?”

“You do not smile, Comrade Cajun. It was only a little joke. I know you will not come over the wire. I know you will return to Washington. I know the kind of man you are.”

Durell said, “They tell me you’re going to be fine, Cesar.”

“Ho. Of course I will survive. But I am so thirsty at the moment. It tires me to talk, I must admit.”

“There’s nothing much more to say,” Durell agreed. “I think we’ve lost the first round.”

“Not altogether. Much was done.”

Durell got two hospital glasses, rinsed them in the sink across the room, dragged a chair up to Skoll’s bedside, and very carefully filled both glasses with vodka and held one to the Russian’s lips. When Skoll finished and sighed and belched, Durell started to drink along with him.

It was going to be a long night.

Table of Contents

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ten

eleven

twelve

thirteen

fourteen

fifteen

sixteen

seventeen

eighteen

nineteen

twenty

twenty-one

twenty-two

twenty-three

twenty-four

twenty-five