Assignment- Tiger Devil Read online

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  Chapter One

  Durell spoke above the night chant of insects and frogs down below on the jungled bank of the Demerara River. "You're sure Dick said the binnacle?"

  "It was his last word to me," Peta said.

  His last word on earth, Durell thought.

  He glanced about the rusty wheelhouse of the Peerless, cocked an ear. "Can you see anything on the foredeck?"

  "No. Hurry." Tension rasped in the voice of the half-French, half-Arawak Indian youth.

  "I heard something."

  "I'd hear it before you," Peta said.

  "You may know the sounds of the forest, but I know the sounds of men," Durell said.

  It did not surprise him that someone else was at the darkened wreck. After Boyer, he would be next on the murderer's list, of course.

  Durell listened again, his electric torch lying beside his knee. A motorboat frog puttered, down among the anacondas and cayman alligators. There was the tireless stirring of the tradewind through crowns of mangrove and white cedar, manni and crabtree, as it cooled the Atlantic shore of tropical Guyana. Through the broken windows of the wheelhouse came a stench compounded of bog and decay, the watery overscent of the thrusting river that had lured Sir Walter Raleigh toward a mythical El Dorado.

  Durell forced an impatient breath through his nostrils, and said: "It's no use. All the screws are frozen in place. Dick couldn't have hidden anything here. The binnacle hasn't been touched in years."

  "Keep looking." Peta's hand suddenly held a flat-barreled pistol, a Chinese-made Tokarev. Stamped ideograms glinted under its slide grip. It hung loosely at his side, its muzzle pointed at the floor, and Durell did not know if he showed it as a threat.

  "Where did you get that?" he said.

  "Mr. Boyer had it when he died."

  Durell wondered if the boy lied.

  "Put it away, kid," he said.

  "I'm not a kid."

  The boy was seventeen at most. Back home he'd be out on a date or studying his lessons, instead of hiring out as a guide.

  Peta regarded Durell through fierce green eyes, and said: "Fm a man. I've been cut for hunting."

  He offered a view of his upper right arm, and Durell saw scar welts. When the cuts were fresh, beana, a potion of herbs and animal bone, had been rubbed into them to bring good luck on the hunt. The boy was rangy as bushrope, almost as tall as DureU, maybe a fraction quicker of movement. But he lacked DureU's solid strength, his sureness and his combat instincts. He looked competent, considering his age, but his sohtary thoughts, his intentions, his loyalties—all were question marks.

  There were no dossiers on -Peta Gibaudan; Durell doubted there was even a birth certificate.

  He considered Peta through dark eyes that turned almost black, as they usually did when he was thoughtful or angry. He continued to monitor the night beyond the walls of the wheelhouse with senses honed by more years than he cared to remember as chief field agent for K Section, the troubleshooting arm of the CIA.

  Peta might be trying to prove something about courage and manhood, but he had chosen the wrong time and place.

  Or he might be a Judas goat, leading him to the slaughter.

  Either way, he was a dangerous liability now, Durell decided. "Want me to take that gun away from you?" he said.

  "I only want to help, Mr. Durell. You said someone was out there." Peta's coppery face looked uncertain, his eyes offended, above sharp cheekbones. The torch on the floor made a pond of radiance that oiled beaded bands the boy wore beneath his knees.

  'Go back to the corial, the dugout canoe," Durell said. *I'll stay here," Peta replied. Then he stiffened as the motorboat frog lapsed into frightened silence.

  "Relax, son," Durell said. "Go back down the manni tree to old Hiomas."

  "You may need me," Peta said stubbornly.

  "Get the hell out of here."

  "All right. But I could help you." Peta thrust the 7.62mm into the pocket of his ragged khaki shorts, and his sneakers made a faint squelching sound as he turned and became a shadow moving through the door; then he was gone, silently.

  Durell's eyes went to his wristwatch. Thirty-five minutes had elapsed. He was pressing his luck. He glanced beyond the shattered windscreen. There was no moon, but the starshine of equatorial South America gave some light. The old freighter was once a proud vessel of the Athel Line of London, to judge by remnants of its red and maroon paint. It had been beached when its cargo caught fire years ago, according to Peta, and had silted in and overgrown with jungle. It was difficult to discern anything on its gloomy deck.

  Durell thought of a legend that might be fact, a murderously crazed presence that might be animal. Or man. Or nothing.

  The Warakabra Tiger.

  A chill stole into his chest, and he looked away from the eerie darkness and turned back to his task.

  Again he went over each detail of the binnacle: magnet chamber, quadrantal spheres, compass hood. The wheelhouse was dank and warm. Sweat rolled off the tip of his nose as he probed the mute steel and brass, chafed at his paucity of information.

  Neither General Dickinson McFee, his gray little boss at K Section, nor Chad Mitchell, his liaison with the embassy in Georgetown, had been very helpful.

  And on the old Peerless, Durell did not even know what it was he sought.

  He raised the torch, aware of the increased risk that it might be seen. A bauxite freighter's horn sounded on the Demerara. A turboprop approaching Timehri Airport whined over centuries-old graves of Dutchmen on abandoned river plantations. EhirelFs attention was caught by a needle of reflection.

  He thrust the light closer to the compass card and saw among a tangle of spider webs that must have been broken by Dick Boyer's hand a small, linear scratch. It ended at the edge of the gimbaled card, pointing across the bridge toward an empty shelf that was waist-high on the wall.

  A thud of footsteps came from below.

  Durell was blinded by an afterglow of floating golf-ball images as he doused the light. He wondered if Peta were safely off the ship. There had been no cries of alarm, no sounds of struggle. Anxiety grappled against his control as he went swiftly to the shelf, ran fingers back and forth under it. They touched a hard nodule, held there by tree gum. He snatched it loose, dropped it into his trousers pocket and slid toward the door, just as a hollow chime of feet reached the top of the steel ladder outside.

  He did not wait, but jerked the door open on a man bent forward with caution and slammed the heavy torch into his face.

  Shards rattled from the splintered lens, and the man toppled backward and cascaded down the metal steps with a long rumble. His automatic weapon clanked against the deck, went off with a burp of automatic fire that drew scolding shrieks from howler monkeys. Durell cursed the racket and hurled himself down lie ladder two, three steps at a time, eyes on the port quarter of the fantail.

  There came a confusion of shouts as men rounded the superstructure.

  Durell jumped over the dark heap lying at the foot of the ladder, darted for the stem. His soles thudded urgently against the deckplates, and the tradewind bellied his white worsted jacket behind him. His thick, black hair was tinged with gray at the temples, but he moved with the lithe efficiency of a college sprinter. He felt a thump as a slug smashed against the heel of his right shoe.

  Submachine guns yammered; bright pips of lead burst on the railing toward which he reached.

  And then he was falling, falling . . .

  Chapter Two

  McFee's call had come the previous afternoon at Deirdre Padgett's rose-brick colonial house near Washington, D.C. Durell's skipjack, a Chesapeake Bay oyster boat converted to a roomy ple
asure sailer, had just been secured after a cruise south to Hampton Roads. The waters had been lulling, forgetful; the long nights filled with lovemaking. Durell waited for Deirdre on the terrace in the shade of big old elms and oaks. A mockingbird was singmg. Seen far beyond the small, weathered boat shed down by the beach, a fleet of Lightnings raced. Their white sails mimicked small clouds above the blue-and-silver-streaked water.

  Here, a mile from Prince John, Maryland, was Durell's Eden. In a world he had traversed time and again, there was only one other place where he felt at home, the old beached sidewheeler, Trois Belles. His grandpa Jonathan, one of the last of the Mississippi River gamblers, had brought him to maturity there, teaching hhn the secrets of the Louisiana bayous and of why men gambled and why they lost. But Durell returned to the Bayou Peche Rouge even less frequently than to Prince John.

  Durell would not have called himself a patriot, but he had willingly chosen to hve his Ufe on the dark, lonely fringe that was society's frontier against the barons of greed and power and conquest. He had found himself in the only arena left where a man's worth might be judged m large measure by a silent move, an efficient kill. He had become ruthlessly competent—and increasingly aware that luck was a wild mare he must ride, but could never bridle.

  A screen door banged and Deirdre brought a pitcher of ice and Durell's favorite bourbon toward the wrought-iron table. "You look tired," she said, and her oval face glowed mischievously. "Maybe last night taught you a lesson about staying away from me too long, darling."

  "It taught me something I'd like to repeat right now."

  "Be serious, Sam. You're not fully recovered from Lebanon."

  He turned his dark eyes toward the Lightnings and made no reply. He had no v^sh to think about that slaughterhouse now. She stood beside him, and he felt her hand smooth the back of his head, as she said, "I wish you hadn't renewed your contract."

  "It was due to expire this week. Dee."

  "But you could have postponed it; had a real vacation. McFee would take you back when you were good and ready. He says you should listen to him and take that desk m Analysis and Synthesis. He says—"

  "I know. The computer puts my survival factor at next to nothing."

  "Why must you continue to tempt fate, darling Sam?"

  He turned his eyes up to where the radiance of the sky brought out the copper sheen of her raven hair. "I'm doing what I'm best suited for," he said.

  He slid his hands around her waist, and his fingertips almost touched. There had been other women, but when they were together, he had no thought of anyone else. She was the only perfect woman for Durell. His fingers moved down the slope of her drillcloth shorts.

  Her smile was warm and serene, and there was wonder and love in her intelligent gray eyes. "Do you want to?" she asked. "It's only three in the afternoon."

  "Say goodnight to the mockingbird," he said. He stood and realized again how tall she was. Her lips met his eagerly.

  The telephone rang.

  "Don't answer it," she said.

  "Dee—"

  "Don't, Sam. It's McFee. I know it."

  Durell found the telephone on a Sheraton cabinet next to a bow window.

  "Samuel?" Only McFee called him that.

  "Yes, sir?"

  "Let's go to scramble."

  Durell flicked a switch at the back of the cabinet, and heard McFee say: "Richard Boyer is dead. Murdered." McFee rarely showed emotion, and did not now. He abhorred it as counterproductive. Durell sometimes wondered if he were capable of feeling anything.

  "Where, sir?" Durell swallowed.

  "Guyana. He was Georgetown control—^I thought he was a close friend of yours." McFee's voice remained precise, businesshke.

  "He was. Same class at Yale and at The Farm. We've been out of touch a couple of years." Durell thought of Dick's wife, the two sons he and Dick had taught to sail on the Severn River. He said, "Has Marie been told?"

  "Strand is on his way to deliver the news now. He knows the family."

  "How did it happen, sir?"

  "Shot in the back. We know very little else. Boyer hadn't filed a Field Information Report in some time. A Georgetown newspaper blew his cover in a front-page story two days ago. Some anti-American hothead apparently read it and decided to settle the CIA's hash on the spot."

  "What's been done about it so far?"

  "The police are investigating, of course. Our ambassador has been assured that the murderer will be brought to justice. Chad Mitchell of the embassy staff will interview the embassy's employees in hopes of finding out who leaked the information, but it's not likely we'll ever know—probably a Guyanese who thought he was being patriotic."

  There was a pause. The song of the mockingbird came through the windowpanes. Then Durell said: "I'd like to go down there, sir."

  "I thought you would."

  Durell's voice was bitter as he said: "Dick might still be alive if the newspaper hadn't printed that story."

  "I understand your drift. I must caution you that K Section is most hesitant to cause trouble with the media. If you do, Western Hemisphere Division will have your head— not to mention State."

  "The reporter knows who put the finger on Dick, sir."

  "You're not to molest the reporter, Samuel. We don't want the negative publicity it could cause. We're embarrassed enough over the public disclosure of Boyer."

  "Dick would regret that his death has embarrassed you, sir."

  "Now, Samuel, the guidelines come straight from Sugar Cube. We must be discreet. The government of Guyana will not take kindly to our interference in their police matters. If you take the assignment, you'll operate as Dick's brother-in-law, going down to wind up his affairs. And you will stay clear of the homicide investigation."

  "And my hands will be tied, so that diplomats can still smile at each other over cocktails." IXirell might easily have spoken in anger, but his voice was thoughtful. 'You may refuse the mission," McFee said. 'I'll go, despite the prohibitions." Durell's tone became blunt. "Now tell me the real objective of the assignment. It goes deeper than Boyer's murder, doesn't it, sir."

  "Perhaps Boyer's murder is as simple as it seems—"

  "But you don't think so."

  "I'm merely reserving judgment. Have you ever heard of an animal called the Warakabra Tiger?"

  "Only vaguely, as a myth out of the rain forests."

  "Some Guyanese claim it really exists. I had Research look into it."

  The phone brought a shuffling of papers, and Durell visualized McFee, in impeccable gray suit and dark gray tie, secreted in his fortress quarters atop K Section headquarters near Washington's Diplomats' Row. Close at hand would be his ever-present blackthorn walking stick with its hidden implements of death.

  McFee said: "It is described as a wolf-size cat that runs in packs. It literally tears up the forest floor in a voracious frenzy, uprooting seedlings and saplings, ripping the bark off larger trees, leaving swaths of destruction twenty to thirty feet wide. No one knows what sends it on these rampages—^if it exists. The devastation has been verified by respected authorities, but there isn't a single eyewitness account of the packs themselves."

  There came a pause. DureU waited, aware that McFee was leading up to something.

  Then McFee continued: "Communications picked up an emergency transmission from Boyer four nights ago. It was very poor quality, as if his equipment were damaged or the batteries had deteriorated. He did not respond to a request for a repeat. We got something on tape: two words. Warakabra and tiger."

  "If Dick broke in on the Q channel, it wasn't to describe the local fauna," Durell said. "Have the lab boys tried enhancement?"

  "Every process known to man, Samuel. The transmission was simply too weak. The tape has given us all we'll get. It's enough to make me suspect that something of the gravest consequence is afoot down there."

  "Ill find out what it is, sir."

  "Keep in mind that Guyana is a small sliver stuck in the shoulder of
South America, that if the wrong hands held it, it could become a wedge into the vitals of Brazil and Venezuela, the mineral-rich keystones to a stable continent."

  "I'm aware of that."

  "You needn't delay your departure; I've gjven you all the information we have."

  "Very well, sir."

  There was a click. The line went dead.

  The Chesapeake seemed smug, contemptuous of Durell and all mortality. Deirdre waited beside the white iron table, gray eyes determinedly calm. When she saw his expression, she averted her face.

  He spoke gently. "It's Dick Boyer, Dee. A homicide in Guyana."

  "Dick?" She buried her face in her hands.

  Durell waited. A Niarchos tanker churned down from Baltimore, its yellow funnel a lily on the great gray box of its hull. Seagulls circled and dipped in its wake. It was not the first time he'd had to tell Deirdre of the death of a dear and mutual friend. She'd always found an accepting courage. He hoped it would serve her as well when another might bring her such word about him. Countless men would pay any price for his head; his dossiers had been red-tabbed by the Soviet KGB and Peking's Black House, and they were patient and thorough organizations. The red tabs meant simply that he was marked to die. Deirdre knew it as well as he. She played relentlessly at forgetting it. He could not afford to.

  She looked at him through wet eyes. "Fm sorry, darling. Forgive me. It must be worse for you,"

  "I'm going to Guyana," he said.

  "Of course. When?"

  "Immediately."

  "I'll go with you."

  "No."

  "You said I did well that time in Thailand."

  "I can't risk you, Dee, even if McFee would allow it." He took her in his arms and kissed her tenderly.

  She caught her breath as their lips parted. "Sam, darling, sometimes I feel that our life together is an enormous bank account that we can draw on only in small change, an hour here, a day there."

  "I'm sorry." He broke away and strode down the brick walk to his old Chevrolet. "Be here for me when I get back?" he called. "Always," she said.

  Chapter Three

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