Assignment - Cong Hai Kill by Edward S. Aarons Page A

looked
pale lemon in the harsh sunlight. A dog barked. The lagoon smelled rancid.
Along it, there was a strip of sand pocked by small red crabs that moved with a
dry, crackling sound. Straw awnings had been unrolled over the decks of the
nearby sampans, and men, women, and children sprawled in sleep to pass away the
insufferably hot mid-afternoon.
    Durell felt sweat
trickle down his chest, belly, and groin as he paid off the samlor driver
in front of a shop that displayed rows of snakeskins and cases of butterflies
and moths pinned to faded velvet. He walked on and considered No. 22, which had
been Doko Dagan’s address. It was better than its neighbors, set
apart in a weedy area and built out over the stagnant water. It was a
half-caste house, semi-European in style, with a wooden veranda laden with
flowering vines that hung like limp banners in the sultry air. There was a tall
hedge of bamboo, with dark gaps like tunnels in it. A giant, brilliant
butterfly flew an erotic dance around Durell’s head as he mounted the veranda.
Voices came from the neighboring canal—the whimper of a child, a high-pitched
quarrel in Hindi. The warped sun shutters were closed. Near the bamboo hedge he
could see mosquitoes rising in affectionate, smothering clouds. The alley
between this house and the next was a dark slot between the wide, overhanging
eaves. Nobody seemed to be watching him. No one had followed him.
    He opened the shutter
door and went in.
    He did not know
precisely what he was looking for. Dagan was dead, and if Dagan had been an
opium runner for criminal exiles from the old Kuomintang Anny, growing old in
wretched outlawry, the man had not prospered that much. The interior of the
house looked dusty and disused.
    There was a wide plank
floor, rattan chairs, Japanese tatami mats. In another room, shadowed by the
closed shutters, were furnishings in ugly, flowered upholstery that showed
decay in this tropical environment. Perhaps, he thought, it reflected Dagan’s
criteria of elegance.
    The third room in the
house overlooked the canal and contained charcoal kitchen stoves. Enough to
cook rice for twenty people, Durell thought. But where were they? He breathed
out softly and loosened his gun in his jacket.
    In the room with the
sleeping mats there were paperback books in Chinese, tall stacks of them in a
corner. The publisher’s imprint was neither Hong Kong nor Taipeh. Durell’s
Chinese was strictly scratch, and he could not read much. of these, but he
would have wagered they came from Peiping University.
    There seemed to be
nothing else, until he found the loose floorboard. It creaked as he backed away
from the books, and when he tested it, he saw it could be pried loose with
little effort.
    Kneeling, he looked into
the dusty cavity beneath.
    He knew at once he had
stumbled on an arms cache of importance, and he knew, too, it was meant for the
Cong Hai.
    There were grenades,
heavy Russian PP SH burp guns— poluaftomatichesky   pistolet Shpagina —some 7X57 Mausers, Schmeisers,
two 7.62mrn Mosin Nagents, old Russian Anny rifles, and boxes of
official 7.62 NATO cartridges and 12.7mm Russian machine-gun clips.
    Durell straightened,
tall and dark in the deepening shadows of the room. Through a break in one of
the sun shutters he could see giant ferns near the side of the house. A rooster
crowed, although the sun was beginning to set. The air felt like a steam towel,
and his shirt clung like warm, wet moss. He felt a sudden urge to return and
ask Major Muong a number of pointed questions. He was also oppressed
by a feeling of danger, although children had begun to play on the nearby
sampans and temple bells tolled lightly in the shimmering air.
    He turned and walked out
of the room.
    As he did so, an arm
whipped across his throat and a hard knee smashed into his kidneys. The arm
strangled him, the knee tried to rupture his spine.
Something  smashed against his head and a, wild carillon rang in his
ears. He