Blood of the Vixen

Chapter One Beautiful Pawn

One hundred times during the long dream-like trip across the Pacific she had remembered the slow words of Sakna Kahn, remembered the fanatic brightness of his eyes, the pain of his lean brown fingers bruising the flesh of her arm.

When the freighter rolled heavily in the long blue swells of the Pacific, she spread her robe on the rough canvas of the hatch cover, stretched out in the rude warm touch of the tropic sun, dressed in the brief two-piece sun suit she had bought in the lobby of the Taj in Bombay.

She shut her eyes against the florid sun, and the gentle rise and fall of the vessel rocked her with a soft, almost sensual motion.

She was tall, taut, clean-limbed but in the wideness of her mouth, the limber way she carried herself, there was a hint of something elemental, almost savage.

Twice she had felt a shadow across her face during the early part of the trip, two days out of Bombay, and had looked up to see the square, pasty face of Gibson, the ship’s second officer. He had a habit of speaking out of lips that barely moved and of never looking into her eyes.

But there had been an answer for Gibson. A slim and delicate answer. Six inches of delicately engraved steel blade with mottled jade hilt. Sakna Kahn had given it to her. It was the last thing he had given her, pressed hurriedly into her hand as he helped her down into the little craft that took her out to the ship.

Sakna Kahn had remembered every detail. He was oddly powerful in political circles. There had been no difficulty getting permission — permission for a Burgher girl to visit the states on a temporary visa.

But she was not like other Burgher girls. Not like her Anglo-Indian cousins in Hindustan and Pakistan, the girls with the blue shade in the deep tan of their skin, the purplish look to their fingernails. Those girls fled from the sun.

She, Latmini Perez, her skin the shade of a jigger of coffee in a liter of milk, could doze in the bright sun, the small beads of perspiration gleaming amid the transparent down that covered her rounded arms and legs. She had much Dutch and Portugese blood in her, very little of the blood of Singh, the lion.

That was one of the reasons Sakna Kahn had selected her. There had been no chance of refusal. Refusal would have meant being dragged, some dark night, into a waiting car and taken out through the warm night, past the sleeping villages beyond the Victoria Bridge and left to rot in the jungle...

She remembered Sakna Kahn’s words: “It is a very simple plan — so it won’t fail. But you may have been seen talking with me. Our enemies are many, and they are clever. They will not expect our plan to be this simple. I will keep your passage as secret as possible. And yet they will find out. If you are careless, they will take you, and there will be many ways in which they will encourage you to speak of this plan. Before you leave, I will give you something which will spare you such torment. Strike deep!”

His words had made no sense to her until the knife was slipped into her hand. Already it had been of use. When Gibson walked up to stare at her on the third day, she had plucked the knife from under the edge of the robe and slid the point of it along the steel deck near the hatch cover. It had made a small grating noise.

Gibson had licked his lips. “What’s that for?”

“The knife is for you — if needs be,” she answered in a half-whisper. Gibson left hurriedly.

There was but one other passenger. An American, with face stained and blotched with disease, returning home to die. He seldom left his cabin.

And that was the way Latmini Perez wished the trip to be. Alone. Time to think. Time to remember. Time to grow accustomed to fear.

As she remembered Sakna Kahn’s words, she reached with her right hand and, with gentle fingertips, touched the thin white ridge of scar tissue that marred the clear skin above her knee. She frowned. The scar would always be there. There should be a way to make Sakna Kahn pay for that blemish. Pay in blood, as she had payed.

Yes, the plan was simple. So simple that it should succeed. If she did not become careless.

After customs inspection and verification of her papers in the Port of Los Angeles, she left the ship and went directly to the railroad station Sakna Kahn had mentioned. As he had ordered, she made no attempt at all to see if she was being followed.

She checked her two suitcases at the station, caught a taxi and went to the heart of the shopping section. There she bought with the money he had given her, several new dresses, a light suit, a hat, underthings, nylons, accessories. She bought a bag for them, a lightweight expensive suitcase.

She left the clothes she had purchased in Bombay behind, and wore her new things. Carrying the bag with her, she went to a movie, and left ten minutes later by the side door. She took a taxi out to Wiltshire and had the driver let her off on a corner. When a bus stopped, she waited until the last possible moment before boarding it. She was certain then that she wasn’t followed. With the change of clothes, she had become an American girl, with an excellent tan, and an interesting trace of something foreign in her manner, and particularly in her speech.

Forsaking the bags she had checked, she took a Pacific Electric train to San Bernadino and there transferred to a major railroad headed East. Six hundred miles later she changed from coach to pullman.

She slept, lulled by the clattering and rocking of the pullman car. In her sleep her slim fingers touched the mottled jade hilt of the slim dagger. With the blade sheathed, it was taped to her side, hilt down. Her body warmed the jade.

Latmini Perez shut herself in a telephone booth in the Pennsylvania Station. Sakna Kahn had made her memorize the number. It took her several moments to figure out the alphabetical and numerical combination on the dial.

A woman answered, her voice high and impatient. “Yes? What is it?”

“Badla lena,” she answered, saying the Hindi phrase meaning ‘revenge.’ To have come so many thousand miles through the watchfulness of the enemy in order to say these few words into the black, chipped mouthpiece...

“Oh! I see. Wait a moment, please.” The line was silent. Latmini took a deep, shuddering breath.

A man came on the line. “Listen carefully. You can’t come here. Go to the Hotel Arnot on West Fiftieth. There will be a reservation for you there, made in the name of Janice Walters. Go to your room and stay there. Be careful. Open the door for the man who will say, ‘Are you ready yet, Miss Walters?’ Is that clear?”

“Yes.”

The line clicked, went dead. She stepped out of the booth, picked up the suitcase and walked quickly back into the waiting room, reassured by the dense crowds and yet afraid of who might be in those crowds.

The Arnot was in a dusty brown building, the lobby entrance dim and bleak as compared with a garish door to the left over which sputtering neon announced, The Arnot Grill — Music by Al Denees.

The desk clerk was a blond young man with pointed features. He looked approvingly at her as she said, “You have a reservation for me? Janice Walters.” He placed the registration card in front of her. “Yes, we do, Miss Walters. But we can’t give you a single. Will a suite be okay?”

“Excellent.”

She signed, the clerk tapped the desk bell and gave the key to the hop who hurried over. He picked up her suitcase, led the way to the elevator and stepped aside as she walked in. Eighth floor. Thick rugs, badly worn on the corridor floor. White carved moulding and deep aqua walls. Thick, soft silence and the odor of dust.

“To your right, Miss.”

Eight oh nine and eight eleven at the end of the corridor. He clicked on the overhead lights, and the small sitting room was cheerless, the furniture arranged geometrically, the tapestry upholstery stained with oil from the hair of the countless people who had sat there.

The bedroom was in contrast, the walls refinished in pale gray, the furniture new, modern, inescapably cheap.

The hop said, “They’re redecorating. In this layout the bedroom’s all done but they haven’t touched this sitting room yet.”

She wasn’t used to the currency. She handed him the largest of her silver coins and it seemed to be adequate. “Call the desk if you want anything,” he said, let himself out. She affixed the chain across the door, hurried to the bedroom and did the same with the bedroom door which opened on the corridor. Then she slipped the taped knife into her sleeve.

On impulse, she turned off the lights, stood by the wide windows and looked down into the honking, confusing traffic of Fiftieth Street. For the first time in many days, she felt almost relaxed. With relaxation came reaction. She walked into the bedroom, sat listlessly on the edge of the bed, the tip of her cigarette making a subdued red spot in the darkness. When the cigarette was done, she stubbed it out and lay back on the bed. The traffic noise was a vast, throbbing lullaby...

She started violently, suddenly aware of the tapping at her door. There was a bitter taste in her mouth. Her sleep had been sound. She stood up so quickly that she wavered dizzily. In the sitting room, she turned on the floor lamp and a table lamp and arranged her hair quickly as she walked to the door.

“Who is there?”

“Are you ready yet, Miss Walters?”

She slipped the chain off and opened the door. The stocky man came in, his hat in his hand. He had a violently florid complexion, hair so blond as to be almost white, his eyebrows and small mustache startling against the veined red of his skin. His eyes were pale, watery blue, quite vague — but she got the impression that those eyes saw all that was necessary to see. He was very well dressed.

He closed the door behind him, slipped the chain back in the slot, and took off his topcoat, threw topcoat and hat on the frayed couch and sat down heavily in the nearest chair, looking at her with evident approval.

“I’m Roger,” he said, as though that one word explained everything.

“Roger? I don’t—”

“Of course you don’t, my dear.” His voice had the clipped, flat accent of a Lord Haw Haw. “It isn’t necessary that you know.” He looked at her intently, his eyes ranging from ankle to throat. She backed away and sat down. “A very nice job of selection by our friend, Sakna,” he said.

“Against my will,” she said.

Roger laughed. “Of course, my dear. No one willingly does this sort of thing, you know. That is, unless they happen to be psychopathic. I would assume that you are — quite normal.”

“What is the next step?” she said.

“You will tell me every detail of your instructions,” he said quietly.

She shook her head. “No. I cannot.”

His face turned a deeper shade and his eyes narrowed. “May I ask why not?”

“Part of my instructions are to tell no one.”

He smiled. “Oh, but those instructions came from Sakna Kahn. Here you are under my jurisdiction, my dear. I countermand his orders.”

“I won’t accept the change,” she said firmly. “It is all very well for you to ignore him, but I have to go back there. You don’t. As long as I have to go back and report to him, I will do exactly what he told me to do.”

His anger faded. “You are stubborn, my dear. Very well, then. If you won’t, you won’t. At least we’ve done part of our job. We’ve put you in the same hotel where Karl Ehrlich is staying. Sakna Kahn at least managed to tell us that much of your mission.”

“Ehrlich is — here!” she gasped.

“Certainly! You’ll know him by sight?”

“Sakna Kahn had one picture. A poor one, cut from a Berlin newspaper from before the war.”

“He hasn’t changed. He’s tall, heavy through the shoulders. Coarse features. He is very mild in action, quite courtly in fact. He has a — shall we say — pronounced regard for the fair sex.”

“Sakna Kahn knew that when he — selected me.”

Roger smiled. “I assume that Sakna Kahn has the usual safeguards to guarantee your obedience?”

She remembered the look in Sakna Kahn’s eyes when he had said to her, “Remember, my dear, you have two younger sisters. Any deviation from your instructions would be unfortunate. We would have to pay them a visit. Your family plantation near Ratnapura is quite isolated, is it not?”

“Yes,” she said weakly to Roger. “My obedience is beyond question.”

“He is a clever man. But so is Ehrlich. It takes a clever man to get a clean bill of health from the War Crimes people when you have Ehrlich’s background. I must be leaving. You have the number. In case of trouble, telephone again.”

He picked up his coat and hat. She followed him to the door. At the door he turned, smiling at her, twirling the hat in his hand. Suddenly the hat smashed up at her face, the room swung like a giant pendulum and there was a touch of fire along the line of her jaw. She felt herself topple toward the floor, but she couldn’t feel the impact of landing on the floor. She fell endlessly...

Light stung through her eyelids. She moaned and put her arm across her eyes. From far away Roger said, “Ah, awake again, I see.”

She blinked at him. He sat in his shirtsleeves looking at her. She was on the couch. Her jaw hurt. She touched her fingertips to it.

“There will be no mark,” he said, “if that’s what you’re worried about. I masked my fist with my hat.”

Under cover of her arm, she reached gently with the fingers of her other hand, found to her dismay that her sleeve was unbuttoned, the jade knife gone.

“Your plaything is on the bureau,” he said. “I took the liberty. I thought you might be dangerously angry.”

She sat up dizzily, the pain throbbing along the lean line of her jaw. “Why did you?” she whispered hoarsely.

“An elementary precaution. Your little gift for Ehrlich would have been taken if you had had it here. If I could take it, Ehrlich could take it. I assure you, my dear, that you have been carefully searched. I trust you left it in a safe place?”

He smiled with his lips alone. The vague blue eyes had glints of anger.

“I don’t believe you, of course,” she said.

“That is of no interest to me.”

“Had you found what you sought, Roger, you would have been gone by the time I awakened.”

“Possibly,” he said casually.

“I want to laugh at you,” she said. “You have made me feel good. Very good. I was foolish. I thought that Sakna Kahn and the ones like him — you, for example — were selfless fanatics. It is a pleasure to find you are a common thief. It makes all of you less formidable.”

He stood up and slowly slipped into his suitcoat, smiling down at her as he buttoned it. “One round for you, my dear. It is like a mathematical equation. Had I won, you would have been proven a poor one for Sakna Kahn to have sent.” He picked up his coat and hat again and hurriedly let himself out. She walked over to the door and replaced the chain.

As she was getting dressed, she ordered her dinner. It was too late to go out alone. When she had finished, she pushed the cart out into the hallway, locked her door and glanced at her watch. Nearly eleven. She thought vaguely of calling Ehrlich, even went so far as to rest her hand lightly on the phone. The idea was poor, she realized, and she was motivated by the urge to get the business over with quickly. She forced herself to relax. She sat in the darkened room for a time, watching the night silhouettes of the buildings of central Manhattan. She went to bed.

The tapping at the door was insistent. It had worked itself into her dreams before awakening her. In her dreams she was crouched in the heavy dust of a Ceylonese village street. On the far edge of the jungle a machine gun made an odd sleepy noise.

She sat up in the darkness, her palms moist. The tapping sounded again. She stepped into her slippers, padded over to the door and said, close to the panel, “Who is it?”

A woman’s voice, oddly familiar, spoke: “Let me come in, please.” Something of panic and something of despair was in the voice.

“Who are you?”

“I’m a friend of Roger’s. Please. Quickly!”

Leaving the chain on, she opened the door and looked cautiously out. A young woman with heavy facial bones, brown hair, smart clothes stood outside. “Hand me your purse through the crack in the door,” Latmini said.

Quickly the girl pushed the purse through, Latmini shut the door, unclasped the purse, looked quickly inside. She snapped it shut, took off the chain and opened the door. The girl came in hurriedly and Latmini locked the door behind her.

Latmini clicked on the bright overhead lights. They stood for an awkward moment, looking at each other inquisitively.

“It is very late. Won’t you sit down?” Latmini said.

The girl sat on the edge of the couch in a posture of strain. “Who are you?” Latmini asked.

“Wanda Dziemansek,” the girl said. “It means nothing to you, I know. I talked to you before. I answered the phone when you called. I couldn’t come earlier. I... I love Roger Darron.”

“I don’t see how that can possibly interest me,” Latmini said.

“I know how he is,” Wanda said. “It has happened before. I will not let it happen again. When he came to see me, he beat me. I knew then that you are beautiful. He beats me when he likes someone else. He drank a great deal and fell asleep. He will not notice that I am gone.”

Latmini frowned. “I don’t understand all this.”

The girl stood up suddenly. She began to pace back and forth. She changed suddenly from a rather stolid-looking brown-haired girl into something of fire and ice and fury. “I tell you that this will not happen again. I, Wanda Dziemansek, will prevent it. Sure, he took me out of a D. P. camp near Munich — but it doesn’t matter anymore. I will not wait patiently for him to come back to me again. I am grateful to him no longer.”

“I have no interest whatsoever in your Roger Darron.”

“It makes no difference. If he likes you, he will find a way. I know how it is done. He knows things about you. Oh, he is very clever.” She mimicked his tone: “My dear Miss Walters. You would hate to have me advise the authorities of your real reason for being here, wouldn’t you? There will be no need to do that—”

“But isn’t he, as a go-between for illicit sales of arms and ammunitions, as vulnerable as anyone else?” Latmini asked.

“There is no evidence against him. None! And he has taken out his first papers. He is better protected than you others who only visit.”

“But why do you come here to tell me this nonsense?” Latmini asked.

Wanda tapped her chest. “Because this time it will be different. This time I will go to the authorities and I will tell them why Ehrlich has come here. I will tell which U. N. delegates have been contacted by Ehrlich. I will tell them why Roger Darron has received word from Sakna Kahn. I will expose the whole stinking mess. You think of what I have told you when Roger comes to you with one of his — so delicate proposals. You hear me!”

“Wait a moment, Miss Dziemansek. I want to ask you—”

“There is nothing more to say to you. I despise you, Miss Walters, or whatever your name is. I could spit into your face! I have seen war, Miss Walters. I have seen the bombs land on the villages. I have seen children with half their faces blown away crawling through the dirt and crying for someone no longer there. Let me go.”

“But I don’t—”

“You and your kind want it all to come back again. Leave Roger Darron alone!”

There was nothing more to say. Latmini Perez let the girl out, shut the door behind her. Latmini felt emotionally exhausted. She went back to bed but she could not sleep. She thought of Roger Darron’s vague eyes, of his florid face. Obviously, if he was able to gain the release of Wanda from a D. P. camp, he must have been in a position of some authority. She wondered if Roger Darron would do as Wanda believed he would.

Suddenly she sat bolt upright, her heart pounding. If Wanda went to the authorities, the entire plan would fail. With Darron out of the way, no one would be able to tell Sakna Kahn exactly what had happened quickly enough. Quickly enough to prevent what Kahn had threatened if Latmini failed to carry out her instructions. Kahn would believe that Latmini Perez had betrayed him.

She thought for a time of the towering hills of Ratnapura, of the neat rows of the clipped tea bushes that marched over the irregular high fields, of the warm taste of arrack and honey. She muffled the sound of her weeping with the corner of the blanket...