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

cities.
Everything was new and changing, he thought; but everything in his business was
the same-dirty and frustrating and dangerous, never according to plan. Hence,
he preferred to be stimulated by sounds and smells that smote the senses,
rather than to be disarmed by the seductive cocoons of the glittering new
hotels.
    Deirdre had finished
dressing for dinner, and appeared in a white brocaded sheath which defined and
accented all the fine articulations of her body beneath the Thai garment. She
wore a small string of pearls she had purchased in Bangkok the previous day,
much to his annoyance at this fernini.ne lapse; but he had to admit that her
appearance justified the effort. He felt his heart lurch a little, but he kept
his face blunt as he guided Anna-Marie into Deirdre’s room, adjacent to his
own.
    “Dee, see if you can
clean her up and talk a little sense into her, will you? She’s  your  friend,
and obviously not mine.”
    Deirdre looked at the
French girl with dismay. “What happened to you?”
    Anna-Marie was like a
sulky blonde doll. “Perhaps I was foolish. I wanted advice, and not from either
of you.
    Nothing works out the
way I hoped it would.”
    Deirdre was all
attentive solicitude. Durell, watching the two girls, felt oddly like a bull in
a china shop, as if they were in league against him, sharing a certain
invisible bond that excluded him ‘from their private communion.
    “She doesn’t trust me,”
he said. “She thinks I’m going to hurt her precious Orris. I don’t deny
I’d like to kill the son of a bitch, for all the damage he’s done our side.
    But I told her, and you
told her—”
    “Poor Anna-Marie.”
Deirdre’s marvelous gray eyes were hostile as she petted and soothed the
bedraggled blonde girl. “No wonder she ran away, the way you talk about the man
she loves.”
    Durell was silent,
biting his tongue, and Deirdre said to the French girl: “But you must trust us,
darling. It’s too late for anything else now. I’ll keep Sam in hand, don’t
worry. . . . Just tell me what you were really trying to do when you ran away
from the hotel.”
    “I only wanted advice,”
Anna-Marie whispered, rolling her blue eyes in animosity toward Durell.
    “From a Chinese named
Chang,” Durell said.
    “Uncle Chang is an old
family friend,” Deirdre returned. “Anna-Marie told me about him years ago, when
we were in school together. A very dear old man whom she can trust.”
    “Well, he wasn’t at
home,” Durell said. “Nobody was there except a thug who tried to drown me. And
Major Muong is now waiting downstairs for an explanation of a dead
man floating in one of his  klongs .”
    Deirdre shrugged this
off and asked him to leave Anna-Marie to her. “She’ll be all right. She won’t
do anything so foolish again.”
    Durell snapped: “She
still hasn’t told us where we rendezvous with Lantern. We’ve got to know first. Muong wants
him, too, and we’re going to need some fancy footwork to keep Muong from
tearing Orris apart when we get him.”
    “That’s your
department," Deirdre said aloofly. “Anna-Marie trusts me. She’ll behave
herself now.”
    He had to swallow his
frustration. If Deirdre was trying to tell him anything with her attitude, he
could read little of it in her face. He checked her room and found a bug under
her telephone similar to the one in his own room; he showed it to her and suggested
she lock the door to keep Anna-Marie there, then went down to soothe Major
T.M.K. Muong’s ruffled feelings.
     
    Major Muong had
bland brown eyes and thin black hair plastered close to a round, intelligent
head. He was taller than the average Thai, with clear brown skin and the
prideful eyes of a race that had gained freedom in the thirteenth century, the
“Dawn of Happiness” under the kingdom of Sukhothai and then, having
fought the mighty Khmer kings who had established vassal principates in
the territory, adopted the Khmer alphabet,