who was Saito?
When the toy engine roared out of the jungle and across a small plain, the grotesque caricature of a city rushed into view—Palembang. Its hundred thousand people included somewhat less than two thousand Europeans and Eurasians. Swamps, stilted homes, naked children and a great stone mosque ushered it in. The train chugged and puffed, grinding to a halt alongside a weather-beaten wooden station, and he rose from his hard seat, picking up his traveling bag.
As the stir in the car ceased, he realized the native passengers were waiting for him to leave. Tuan—he had to act like a tuan or lose face. Walking between the waiting Malays, he descended to a warped platform, glanced curiously around and strode out to the muddy street. Between the town and coast lay a gently falling, jungled plain split by the tributaries of a dozen rivers.
A wild land, he thought, ancient yet new. Rubber had brought it to life. First rubber, then oil. Now the tuans were moving in, bleeding the land of its black gold; but a restless wind was rustling among the people of the East.
He swept his eyes over the street, a sodden thoroughfare lined with barracks, flimsy Chinese hotels, churches, small shops—homes that were incredibly filthy shacks. The European businesses and residences were grouped together, standing like an oasis amid the ramshackle native quarters. His nostrils caught the acrid tang of gasoline. Downstream along the Plaju lay the Royal Dutch Petroleum Company, across from another foreign-owned refinery.
His own interests lay upstream, just beyond the edge of town. There, before the Musi forked, lay the giant Sumatra Independent Oil Company, which was largely American-owned and -operated. That was his target. He swung his eys around the street, spotted an ancient Ford cab and started toward it, hand raised. A slim, ageless Malay sprang out from behind the wheel, bowed respectfully and opened the rear door.
“Sumatra Independent,” he ordered, as if he’d made the trip a thousand times before.
The native eyes quickly assessed him. “Yes, tuan.”
two
“DRISCOLL’S DEAD,” Mike Hawker explained, “killed by a native.”
Stark thoughtfully eyed the beefy superintendent of Sumatra Independent across the scarred desk in the latter’s office, which in reality was a side room of his house. His florid face dripped sweat, and a soiled white shirt clung to his barrel-shaped chest. Dark stubble masked his face, broken by a livid scar across one cheek. He reeked of tobacco.
Hawker was his contact, just as he had been Driscoll’s. Stark had covered his scant file briefly: American, age forty, native wife, twelve years on Sumatra during which he’d risen from driller to his present position. Thoroughly dependable. Nothing extraordinary in the record. He dismissed the knowledge.
“Catch the killer?” he asked.
Hawker shrugged. “No clues—didn’t see it. Just found the body.”
“Where?”
“On the veranda outside.” He gestured toward the door.
“How did you know it was a native?”
“Blowgun,” Hawker replied imperturbably. “On this island that spells Malay.” A slightly contemptuous note had crept into his voice. Stark disregarded it.
“Can you assign any possible motive?”
“No, none at all, unless he stepped on someone’s toes.”
“Hardly a reason for murder,” Stark commented wryly. “Did anyone know he was ONI?”
“No—except me, of course. I was passing him off as a wheel from the main office,” Hawker explained.
“Now I’m the wheel,” Stark observed absently. “Mind briefing me on his moves while he was here—who he talked with and where he went?”
Hawker did, shortly, and when he finished Stark knew very little more than before. Driscoll had been on the island several weeks, had talked with a few people and had died. Nothing more.
Stark tried a different approach. “How many white men have been killed by blowguns around here lately?”
The superintendent looked startled. “Why, no one,” he finally admitted. “A Dutchman got picked off that way in town but that was a couple of years ago.”
“A bit unusual, eh?”
“You might say that.” Hawker smiled grimly. “Everything’s unusual in this country.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning nothing. This ain’t Tulsa, that’s all.”
“That your home?” Stark asked politely.
Hawker grunted. “It is, or was. Damned if I know after twelve years in this hellhole.” His lips formed a feeble grin. “I guess by now I’ve gone native.”
He watched the superintendent’s face and carefully asked, “Ever hear of a man named Saito?”
Hawker’s eyes grew curious. “Driscoll asked that same question,” he replied obliquely.
“I wouldn’t be surprised. What did you tell him?”
“Nothing. The name didn’t ring a bell.” He smiled quizzically. “Especially that shadow part—he made the guy sound like something out of Scotland Yard.”
Stark dropped the subject and asked about the fields.
“We’re ready,” Hawker promised bluntly. “We’re planting dynamite under all the shops and heavy equipment and mining the tank areas with fire bombs. Sledge hammers and acetylene torches will take care of the rest. We plan to blast the main pipeline every couple of hundred yards.”
“Will you have time?”
“Sure.” Hawker’s voice was confident. “Those damned Japs won’t get up the Musi that quick. Not with the Dutch and English planted downstream. We’re at the end of the line, so to speak.”
“Could you blow the works today if you had to?”
Hawker looked startled. “Christ, no! It’s quite a job getting ready to demolish a fifty-million-buck plant that’s spread from here to hell-and-gone. The pipeline runs better than a hundred miles, and all swamp.”
“When will you be ready?”
“A week . . . maybe less.”
“How long will it take to destroy the works after you’re ready?” Stark pursued.
“An hour or two at the most,” Hawker promised. “We have a master ignition system laid out. One punch on the plunger and you’ll see more hell around here than you ever did at Pearl Harbor.”
Stark doubted that but didn’t say so. However, the words bolstered his confidence in the job that had to be done. He’d seen other men of the same breed; they usually produced.
Hawker continued, “Personally, I hate to see it happen. I’ve got a lot of my life tied up here—some pretty damned hard-working, sweaty years. I’ve watched this place grow from a hole in the jungles.” He flung his arm reminiscently toward the compound.
“Rough,” Stark murmured.
“Hell, yes, it’s rough, but I suppose it can’t be helped. From what I hear, we haven’t the chance of a virgin in sailor town. They say the main Jap fleet is streaming down from the Philippines like sardines.” He stared tentatively at the ONI man.
“Maybe so, but the orders are to wait until the last possible moment.” Stark smiled grimly. “How would you like to destroy a fifty-million-dollar plant and then have the island hold?”
Hawker laughed boisterously. “Damned if I wouldn’t have to get another job.”
“Uh-huh, me too.”
Hawker banged the desk and bellowed, “Boy . . . beer!”