I lay there for a long time, looking out at the moon through the bedroom window. I watched it drift higher and higher and finally disappear, leaving the stars alone and coldly bright in the patch of sky. Tropical night, lush and fragrant. The stuff of books, the stuff of dreams.
The stuff of dreams…
Chapter Five
The Penang jungle lies below us like a surrealistic basrelief map done in varying shades of black, and the sky is a smooth black canopy studded with pinpoints of coruscating light. On the seat beside me in the cockpit of the DC-3, Pete sits nervously rubbing his hands back and forth on his whipcord trousers. Neither of us has spoken in a long while, and the only sound is the steady, almost soporific drone of the Pratt amp; Whitney engines, port and starboard. We are flying low-five hundred feet now, by the altimeter — and all the running lights are off.
I glance at my watch. It is twenty-three minutes past midnight. My eyes move to the instrument panel and the magnetic compass there. On course. I peer through the windshield at the ebon jungle below.
Pete turns to look at me; his face is pinched in the flickering red light from the instrument panel. “How much farther?” he asks, and in his voice there is a touch of fear. Stage fright, I think, and I smile. “It won’t be long now, kid. Listen, relax, will you?”
“I don’t know, Dan. I’m not cut out for this kind of thing.”
I laugh a little to myself. I have made similar runs, longer ones, a dozen times. Nothing to them, nothing at all. But it’s his first time. I remember mine, a short push into Sumatra, near Palembang, with the old Belgian grinning beside me: dry throat, hands that shook just slightly on the stick coming in, stomach churning, asshole twitching. I laugh again, silently. He’ll be all right. Once we get down and he sees the money-twelve thousand Singapore dollars this wop, this Spindello, will have for the contraband silk we’re carrying-he’ ll be just fine.
I check my watch again. Twelve twenty-eight. Air speed indicator: one hundred, holding steady. The needle has not moved since I cut to half throttle as we passed over the tin smelters in Wellesley Province. Two more minutes, give or take. Spindello has promised to have signal fires lighting the strip. Nothing to it, nothing at all.
Compass reading: a few degrees off course, now. Soft left rudder. Okay. I watch the altimeter, easing forward on the yoke: three hundred feet, two hundred.
Twelve-thirty.
Below us, dead ahead in the blackness of the jungle, I see the orange-yellow flames of the signal fires. But there are only two of them, one on either side. I can only make out a small section of the strip; the rest is shrouded. Where have they built the two? At the head? In the middle? Where?
Pete leans forward on the seat, staring through the windshield. “I thought they were supposed to fire the length of the runway.”
“Take it easy, kid.”
“I don’t like it.”
“Cinch your belt. We’re on our way.”
I take her down, one eye on the altimeter. One hundred feet. I line up with the fires, cutting the power back. Landing gear down, flaps down. I hit the switch for the landing lights, and twin cones snap on, picking up the strip. I can see it clearly now, for the first time.
“Dan!”
It is short, much too short, and honeycombed with small holes and jagged cracks. God damn you, Spindello, God damn you to hell, you said it was in good condition, you said it was smooth and in very good condition…
“Dan, pull out!”
“Shut up!”
“You can’t land on that! This crate won’t stand up!”
“Shut up, shut up!”
It is my decision, and I know I have to take her down. We’re not carrying much of a payload in terms of weight, we’ll make it all right. And we can’t fly the silk back to Singapore, too dangerous, and the money, twelve thousand Singapore dollars…
“Pull out, Dan, pull out!”
“No! Can’t you shut up?”
“You’ll kill us both!”
“I can make it, hold on!”
I ease back on the yoke, chopping the throttles. The strip rushes up, the wheels touch, bounce, touch again. We’re almost down! I fight off the urge to work the brake pedals; wait, wait until she settles.. There! Now get set: brakes, reverse power-
We hit something: a hole, a crevice. The Dakota begins to roll, yawing from side to side. I can’t hold it! Oh God, oh Jesus! The world tilts, crazily, unbelievably. Lights spin in kaleidoscopic brilliance. Suddenly there is an impact, a shattering bursting impact, and Pete screams, he screams, dear God sweet Mother I hear him scream, and then the stench of high octane fuel erupts in my nostrils and I feel myself being lifted, propelled forward…
After that, there is only blackness.
And the sound of Pete screaming.
Blackness.
Screaming.
Blackness.
Screaming…
I came out of it very quickly, the way I usually come out of it. I was kneeling on the wet, rumpled sheets of my bed, and my body was coated with a hot and viscid sweat. My heart hammered brutally, irregularly, inside my chest cavity.
I knelt there without moving for a long time, until the last vestiges of the dream evaporated and the sounds were gone from my ears. Then I drew back the mosquito netting and sat on the edge of the bed with my head hanging between my knees. How many more nights would I relive what had happened on Penang? How many more nights would I feel the blackness surround me, and hear the tortured death cries of Pete Falco? Rhetorical questions. It had been two years now, but the dream still came three or four nights a month-stilt vivid, still frightening, a nightmare within a nightmare.
I stood and crossed on rubbery legs to the rattan chair near my bed, where I had draped my clothes the night before. I put on my khaki trousers and went into the half-bath. My lacerated hands inside the gauze wrappings throbbed and burned, and I put a fresh coating of salve on the cuts and abrasions; then I filled a carafe with tepid water from the tap and poured it over my head and neck.
I was toweling myself dry when the knock came at the door.
Frowning, I went out there, the towel draped around my neck. I stood to one side of the door and listened to whoever it was knock again-soft, insistent. Pretty soon I said, “Who is it?”
“Police,” a cultured and unfamiliar voice answered. The accent was Malay.
Now what the hell? I thought. I unbarred the door and opened it just far enough so that I could look out, blocking it with my body. He was a little man, wiry, dark-skinned, with very large and very intelligent black eyes, kinky blue-black hair that reminded you of poodle fur, and a thin, humorless mouth. A neat, conservative white suit, with a crisply laundered white shirt beneath it, comprised his dress; and his plain black shoes had been polished until they were bright mirrors.
I let my body relax and pulled the door wide. He said, “You are Mr. Daniel Connell?”
“That’s right.”
“I am Inspector Kok Chin Tiong, of the Singapore polis. I would like to speak with you, please.”
“What about?”
“May I come in?”
“I’m a lousy housekeeper.”
“Tida apa,” he said without smiling.
I shrugged and stood aside for him. When he had entered, he stood looking around and wrinkling his nose as if something smelled peculiar to him. His eyes were expressionless. He waited until I had closed the door before saying, “You have had an accident, Mr. Connell?”
“What?”
“The bandages on your hands.”
“Yes, an accident,” I said shortly.
His black eyes searched my face for a moment, and then he put his hands behind his back and walked to the window. He looked down at Punyang Street below, at the palpitating ebb and flow of Chinese there, at the arcaded market stalls with their infinite variety of goods spread out in rows on the littered street and in the shadows of the Five Foot Ways-covered walkways which are formed by the supporting pillars and the jutting overhang of the buildings. I could hear the voices of hawkers extolling the virtues of their wares, rising above the strident, excited singsong of their potential customers. An automobile horn punctuated the din with short, sharp, angry blasts.