The Judas Spy Page 4

  Sitting in the darkness, holding one louver of the jalousie open an eighth of an inch, Nick grinned. The fist of authority, ready to open, palm up. He couldn't wait to ask Nick for his passport and he wanted to do it in private in case there was a chance to make a few rupees.

  Sudirmat departed, looking displeased. Several people went by, looking bathed and refreshed and dressed for dinner, some in white linen, some in a combination of European and Indonesian fashion. They all looked cool, colorful and comfortable. Adam Machmur went by with a distinguished-looking Indonesian Nick had not met, and Ong Tjang passed with two Chinese of about his own age — well-fed, cautious and prosperous.

  At last Hans Nordenboss arrived, carrying a suit-bag, accompanied by a house servant with two pieces of luggage. Nick was across the hall and opening the door of his room before Hans' knuckles hit the panel.

  Hans followed him into the room, thanked the youth who departed promptly, and said, "Hi'yuh Nick. Whom I'll call Al from now on. Where did you drop from just then?"

  They shook hands and exchanged grins. Nick had worked with Nordenboss once before. He was a short, slightly roly-poly man with close-cropped hair and a merry pudding of a face. The kind who could fool you — the body was muscle and sinew, not fat, and the cheery moonface masked a keen intelligence and a knowledge of Southeast Asia that was equalled only by a few Britishers and Hollanders who had spent their fives in the region.

  Nick said, "I was ducking a Colonel Sudirmat. He wants to see my passport. He came looking for me."

  "Gan Bik tipped me." Nordenboss took a leather case from his breast pocket and handed it to Nick. "Here you are, Mr. Bard. In perfect order. You arrived in Djakarta four days ago and stayed with me until yesterday. I brought you some clothes and stuff." He gestured at the cases. "I've got more of your outfit in Djakarta. Including a couple of confidential pieces."

  "From Stuart?"

  "Yes. He's always eager to have us test his little inventions."

  Nick lowered his voice until it barely carried between them. "The kid Akim turned out to be Tala Machmur. Adam and Ong don't want our help. Any line on Judas or Muller or the junk?"

  "Just a thread." Hans spoke as softly. "I have a lead in Djakarta that will take you somewhere. The pressure on these rich families is building up, but they're paying off and keeping to themselves."

  "Are the Chicoms wiggling back into the political picture?"

  "And how. Just in the last few months. They've got money to spend and the Judas ring is putting on political pressure for them, I think. It's weird. Here's Adam Machmur, for instance, a multi-millionaire, giving money to an outfit that wants to wreck him and all like him. And he's damn near forced to smile as he pays."

  "But if they haven't got Tala…?"

  "Who knows what other member of his family they have? Akim? Or one of his other children?"

  "How many does he have?"

  "Your guess is as good as mine. Most of these tycoons are Moslems or pretend to be. They have a handful of wives and kids. Hard to check. If you ask him he'll make some reasonable claim — like four. Then you'll find out some day the truth is nearer twelve."

  Nick chuckled. "These fascinating native customs." He took a white linen suit out of the suit-bag and swiftly donned it. "That Tala is a cutie. Does he have any more like her?"

  "If Adam invites you to a big party, the roast pig bit and dancing the serempi and golek, you'll see more sweet little dolls than you can count. I attended one here about a year ago. There were a thousand people at the feast for four days."

  "Wangle me an invitation."

  "You'll get one soon, I imagine, for helping Tala. They are prompt about repaying obligations and fine hosts. We'll fly over for the party when it comes. By the way — you've probably guessed that we won't fly back tonight. Too late. We'll leave first thing in the morning."

  Hans led Nick to the giant main room. It had an unobtrusive bar in one corner, a waterfall that refreshed the air, a dance floor and a four-piece combo that played excellent French-style jazz. Nick met a couple of dozen men and women, chatted endlessly, enjoyed a wonderful dinner of rijsttafel — a "rice table" with curried lamb and chicken garnished with hardboiled eggs, sliced cucumber, bananas, peanuts, tingling chutney, and fruits and vegetables he could not name. There was thin Indonesian beer and magnificent Danish beer and good whiskies. After the servants withdrew, several couples danced, including Tala and Gan Bik. Colonel Sudirmat drank heavily and ignored Nick.

  At eleven forty-six Nick and Hans strolled back along the corridor, agreeing that they had overeaten, enjoyed a wonderful evening and learned not a damned thing.

  * * *

  Nick unpacked, put on a loose cotton robe and made a few notes in his little green notebook in his private code — a shorthand so secretive he once told Hawk, "Nobody can steal it and find out anything. Lots of times I can't figure out what I wrote."

  At twelve-twenty there was a tap on the door and he admitted Colonel Sudirmat, flushed with the alcohol he had downed, but still emitting, along with booze fumes, an air of tough power in a small package. The Colonel made a mechanical smile with his thin dark lips. "I didn't want to bother you at dinner. May I see your passport now, Mr. Bard?"

  Nick handed him the booklet. Sudirmat inspected it carefully, compared "Mr. Bard" with his photograph, studied the visa pages. "This was issued quite recently, Mr. Bard. You have not been in the importing business very long."

  "My old passport expired."

  "Oh. Have you been friends with Mr. Nordenboss a long time?"

  "Yes."

  "I know of his — connections. Do you have them too?"

  "I have a lot of connections."

  "Ah — that's interesting. Let me know if I can be of help."

  Nick gritted his teeth. Sudirmat was looking at the silver cooler which Nick had found on the table in his room, along with a bowl of fruit, tea in a Thermos pot, a dish of cookies and small sandwiches and a box of the fine cigars. Nick waved at the table. "Won't you have a nightcap?"

  Sudirmat drank two bottles of beer, ate most of the sandwiches and cookies, and put one of the cigars in his pocket and lit another. Nick parried his half-questions politely. When at last the Colonel stood up Nick was quick to escort him to the door. Sudirmat paused in the opening. "Mr. Bard — we'll have to have another talk if you insist on wearing a gun in my area."

  "Gun?" Nick looked down at the thin robe he was wearing.

  "The one you had under your shirt this afternoon. I am supposed to enforce all regulations in my area, you know…"

  Nick closed the door. It was clear. He could wear his gun, but there would be a personal license fee to Colonel Sudirmat. Nick wondered if the Colonel's troops ever saw their pay. An Indonesian private drew about two dollars a month. He lived by doing in a small way what his officers did on a big scale, grabbing and taking bribes, extorting goods and cash from the citizenry, which accounted for much of the persecution of the Chinese.

  Nick's briefing papers on the area had contained some interesting data. He recalled one tip — "…if involved with the local soldiery, money talks. Most will rent their guns to you or criminals for sixteen dollars a day, no questions asked." He chuckled. Perhaps he would hide Wilhelmina and rent his armament from the Colonel. He put out all the fights except a low wattage lamp and lay down on the big bed.

  The tiny, shrill creak that his door hinge made at one point in its turn awoke him instantly. He had practiced listening for it and ordered his senses to monitor it. He watched the panel as it opened, without moving his weight on the high mattress.

  Tala Machmur slipped into the room and softly closed the door behind her. "Al…" A soft whisper.

  "Right here."

  Because the night was warm he had lain down on the top of the bed wearing only a pair of cotton boxer shorts. They had arrived in the luggage Nordenboss brought and were a perfect fit. They should be — they were tailored of the finest available polished cotton, with a hidden po
cket in the crotch to hold a Pierre, one of the lethal gas pellets which N3 of AXE — Nick Carter alias Al Bard — was authorized to use.

  He debated reaching for his robe and decided not to. He and Tala had been through enough together, seen enough of each other, to make at least some convention unnecessary.

  She came across the room with short steps, the smile on her small red lips as merry as that of a young girl meeting either a man she admired and was building dreams around, or a man with whom she was already in love. She wore a sarong of very light buff, with flower designs in soft pink and green. Her glossy black hair, which she had worn up at dinner — to Nick's admiring surprise — now cascaded over her smooth brown shoulders.

  In the soft amber glow she looked like every man's dream, beautifully curvaceous, moving with a fluid muscle motion that expressed grace propelled by ample strength in the deliriously rounded limbs.

  Nick smiled and hitched himself over on the bed, waving an invitation. He whispered, "Hi. Good to see you, Tala. You look absolutely beautiful."

  She hesitated for an instant, then carried a hassock over beside the bed and sat with her dark head at his shoulder. "Do you like my family?"

  "Very much. And Gan Bik is a nice lad. He has a head on his shoulders."

  She made the little shrug and noncommittal blink that girls use to tell a man — especially an older one — that the other or younger man is all right but let's not waste time together talking about him. "What are you going to do now, Al? I know my father and Ong Tjang refused your help."

  "I'm going to Djakarta with Hans in the morning."

  "You won't find the junk or Muller there."

  He asked instantly, "Where did you learn about Muller?"

  She flushed and looked down at her long, slim fingers. "He is supposed to be one of the gang that rob us."

  "And kidnap people like you for a pay-off?"

  "Yes."

  "Please, Tala." He reached out and took one of the delicate hands, holding it as lightly as he might a bird. "Don't hold back information. Help me so that I can help you. Is there another man with Muller known as Judas or Bormann? A badly crippled man with an accent like Muller's."

  She betrayed more than she knew, again, by nodding. "I think so. No — I'm sure of it." She was trying to be honest, but Nick thought — how does she know about Judas' accent?

  "Tell me what other families they have a grip on."

  "I'm not sure of many. No one talks. But the Loponusias, I am sure, and they have the sons of Chen Hsin Liang and Sung Yu-lin. And a daughter of M. A. King."

  "The last three are Chinese?"

  "Indonesian Chinese. The Kings live in the Muslim area of North Sumatra. They are practically besieged."

  "Do you mean that they might be killed any time?"

  "Not exactly. They may be all right as long as M. A. pays the army."

  Will his money hold out until things change?"

  "He is very rich."

  "Sort of like Adam pays Colonel Sudirmat?"

  "Yes, except conditions are worse in Sumatra."

  "Anything else you want to tell me?" he asked softly, wondering if she would reveal how she learned about Judas, and why she was free when the information he had indicated she should be a prisoner on the junk.

  She shook her lovely head slowly, her long lashes lowered. She had both of her hands on his right hand now, and she knew a lot about skin contact, Nick decided, as her smooth, delicate nails flowed over his flesh like the sweep of butterfly wings. They pattered pleasantly on his inner wrist and traced the veins up his naked arm as she pretended to examine his hand. He felt like an important customer in the salon of an especially pretty manicurist. She turned his hand over and lightly fingered the fine lines at the base of his fingers, then followed them to the palm and minutely outlined every line on his palm. No, he decided, I'm with the loveliest gypsy fortune teller anyone ever saw — what do they call them in the Orient? Her forefinger crisscrossed from his thumb to his little finger, danced back down to his wrist, and a sudden tingling shiver lanced delightfully from the base of his spine to the hairs at the back of his neck.

  "In Djakarta," she whispered in a soft, cooing tone, "you might find out something from Mata Nasut. She is famous. You will probably meet her. She is very beautiful… much more beautiful than I will ever be. Do not forget me for her." The small black-crested head bent down and he felt her soft, warm lips on his palm. The tip of her small tongue began to circle in its center where her fingers had alerted his every nerve.

  The shiver became alternating current. It tingled ecstatically between the crown of his scalp and the tips of his toes. He said, "My dear, you're a girl I'll never forget. The courage you showed in that little sub, the way you kept your head, the blow you aimed at that croc when you saw me in danger — one doesn't forget." He brought his free hand over and stroked the hair of the small head still bent on the palm near his midriff. It felt like heated silk.

  Her mouth left his hand and the hassock hitched across the smooth wood floor and her dark eyes came within inches of his. They gleamed like two polished jewels in a temple statue, but they were framed in dark warmth that glowed with life. "You really like me?"

  "I think you're one of a kind. You're gorgeous." No lies there, Nick thought, and how far do I go? The little gustings of her sweet breath matched the heightened beat of his own, stimulated by the current she had generated along his spine which now felt like a heated filament encased in his flesh.

  "You will help us? And me?"

  "I'll do everything I can."

  "And you'll come back to see me? Even if Mata Nasut is as beautiful as I say?"

  "I promise." His hand, freed, came up behind her cameo-like bare brown shoulders, came to rest above her sarong. It was like the closing of another electric circuit.

  The small, pink-tinted lips came within tongue-touch of his own, then softened their plump almost pouty curves in a hoydenish smile that reminded him of the way she had looked in the jungle after Mabel had ripped off her clothes. She dropped her head onto his bare chest and sighed. She made a delightful burden, exuding a warm perfume; a scent he could not type but the aroma of woman was exciting. On his left breast her tongue began the oval dance it had practiced on his palm.

  Tala Machmur, tasting the clean-salt skin of this big man who was rarely out of her secret thoughts, felt a moment of confusion. She was no stranger to human emotions and behavior in all its complexities and sensual details. She had never known prudery. She had run naked until she was six, peeked at couples making love time and again in the hot tropic nights, watched carefully the erotic posturings and dances at the late-night feasts when children were supposed to be in bed. She had experimented with Gan Bik and Balum Nidah, the handsomest youth on Fong Island, and there was no part of the male body she had not minutely explored and tested its reactions. Partly in modern protest against unenforceable tabus, she and Gan Bik had copulated a few times, and would have done so far more frequently if he had his way.

  But with this Orang America she felt so different it aroused caution and question. With Gan it had been nice. Tonight she resisted briefly a hot, drawing compulsion that dried her throat so that she must swallow frequently. It was like what the gurus called a self-force that you could not resist, as when you thirsted for cool water or hungered after a long day and smelled hot, delicious food. She told herself — I do not question the wrong-right of it, the way the old women advise because they have found no happiness and would deny it to others. As a modern I consider only the wisdom…

  The hair on his great chest tickled her cheek and she looked at the brown-pink nipple standing like a tiny island near her eyes. She marked a damp trail to it with her tongue and kissed its tense-stiff tip and felt him quiver. He was, after all, not very different from Gan or Balum in his reactions, but ah — what a difference in the way she felt toward him. In Hawaii he had always been helpful and quiet, although he must often have thought her a stupid and troublesom
e "boy." In the submarine and on Adata she had felt that, whatever happened, he would look after her. It was the real reason, she told herself, she had not shown the fear she felt. She had felt safe and secure with him. At first she had been surprised by the growing warmth in her, a glow that drew its fuel from the very nearness of the big American; his glance fanned the flames, his touch was gasoline on the fire.

  Now, pressed close to him, she was almost overcome by the fiery glow that burned through the core of her like a hot, exciting wick. She wanted to hold him, be held by him, carry him away to keep forever so that the delicious flame would never go out. She wanted to touch and stroke and kiss every part of him, making it hers by right of exploration. She put her small arms around him so tightly that he opened his eyes. "My darling…"

  Nick looked down. Gauguin, where are you now when here is a subject for your chalk and brush that cries out to be captured and preserved just as she is right now? Perspiration glowed hotly on her smooth brown neck and back. She was rolling her head on his chest in a rhythm that was nervously hypnotic, alternately kissing him and locking her black eyes on his, exciting him outlandishly with the raw passion that flashed and sparkled from them.

  A perfect doll, he thought, a beautiful, ready and eager utter doll.

  He grasped her by both arms just below her shoulders and brought her up on top of him, half-on, half-off the bed, and thoroughly kissed the plumpish lips. He was surprised by their flexibility and the feeling of moist ampleness that was quite unique. Savoring their softness and her hot breath and the feel of her against his skin he thought how clever of nature — to give these girls lips that are ideal for making love and for an artist to paint. On canvas they are expressive — against yours the are irresistible.

  She left the hassock and with a twist of her supple body brought the rest of her onto him. Brother, he thought as he felt his hard flesh against her luscious curves, it will take some U-turn to change direction now! He realized that she had lightly oiled and perfumed her body — no wonder it glowed so richly as her temperature rose. The fragrance still eluded him; a blend with sandalwood and the essence-oil of some tropical flower?