Assignment - Cong Hai Kill by Edward S. Aarons Read Free Book Online

looked at her, and
she shuddered. She still wore the sodden white dress she’d had on When she
fell, with an assist from him, into the carp pond of her “Uncle Chang‘s” house.
Durell regarded her with some perplexity. He had tried to win her confidence,
but right from the start there was something about her that rang little warning
bells in the back of his mind. Perhaps he’d been annoyed by her gush of talk
with Deirdre, the way she’d
    ignored his impatient
questions, and then replied to them grudgingly. Although she was small and
petite, she was full and ripe and woman enough to play Delilah to Orris Lantern’s
Samson. But he wasn’t sure of anything except that the whole affair had begun
with trouble and the unnecessary complication of Deirdre-at least, he told
himself, he thought she was far better off at home, even if McFee didn’t—and
now he had an emotional and disturbed young Frenchwoman on his hands who gave
every evidence of turning hostile, of becoming a handicap instead of an asset.
    “It’s my fault,”
Anna-Marie blurted suddenly.
    “What is?”
    “That the poor man is
dead. The one you drowned. It seemed so—so ruthless—”
    “He tried his best to
kill  me ,” Durell said.
    “And how many others
have you killed, Mr. Durell?”
    “I don’t know,” he said
honestly.
    “But always for your
‘business"?”
    “Yes.”
    “Killing is your
business?”
    “Only when necessary.”
    “And you will kill my Orris.
I know it. I see it in your eyes. You are cruel, and you will hunt him down
like an animal.” All at once she covered her face and began to weep. “I should
never have listened to him or encouraged him to trust me.”
    He watched her cry and
looked at the motionless wooden fan in the ceiling and wished the power people
in the town would get their plant running again. The telephone rang again; he
walked over to it and was about to pick it up when he saw the microphone bug
under the table.
    It was crude work, and
any pro would have spotted it easily, with any kind of search. The mike was
tacked just behind the ornate carving along the rim of the pie-crust table
where the telephone rested—a period piece of French antique style—and a bit of
metal from the bug had caught the oil lamplight and shone enough to attract his
eye.
    It   had not been there
before.
    The phone rang twice
more while he traced the wires into the wall, wrapped like a Virginia creeper
around the telephone cord. Then he picked up the instrument.
    “Durell here,” he said
in French.
    “Major Muong, sir.”
    “Yes, Major?”
    “Have you been in your
room all night, sir?”
    “No. You know I
haven’t.”
    “Correct. I am sorry,
but there was some disturbance in the Chinese quarter and a dead man was
reported to us, with a description of yourself—”
    “That’s right. I killed
him.”
    Major Muong was
silent.
    “Where are you, Major?”
    “In the lobby. May I
come up?”
    “I’ll come down. In ten
minutes.”
    “Mr. Durell,” the Thai
said in precise English, “you understand my orders are to cooperate with you,
and I do so willingly, but you must also cooperate in return.”
    “I’ll be down in ten
minutes.”
    “Very well. But no
longer.”
    Durell hung up and blew
air angrily through his nostrils and wondered if he should make an issue out of
the bugged room. He decided not to. He’d have done the same, and more, in Muong’s place.
    He took Anna-Marie with
him, to see Deirdre in her room down the hall.
     
    He preferred the old
tiled corridors of the Palace here to the gleaming new establishments built all
over the world these days. They were too scented and sanitized to own any
distinct personality, and he preferred to know exactly where he was. He could
remember when each bed he slept in was distinctive, Whether in London or
Karachi. He had no wish to be sheltered from the realities of roaches, fleas,
snakes, centipedes, and the crude urinal stinks of overcrowded tropical