Assignment Star Stealers Read online

  ASSIGNMENT ... STAR STEALERS

  1

  DURELL flew from Zurich on a Royal Air Maroc Caravelle and landed at Anfa Airport at Casablanca. It had been raining in Zurich—the sky cold and gray like a dome of steel—but Casablanca was bathed in temperate sunshine. His orders were to move as rapidly as possible, compatible with caution.

  "We can't wait for Mrs. Hannibal Coppitt," McFee had said. "She's agreed to come along later." General Dickinson McFee's small presence had filled the Louis XIV suite at Zurich's Dolder Grande Hotel. He'd looked gloomy. "She's been in seclusion ever since her husband, the Brigadier, was killed in that helicopter crash. Her own people have been running HCI for her—the electronics conglomerate. But she has agreed to help us."

  "I really don't remember her," Durell had said.

  "She is in mourning. But she remembered you, from Bayou Peche Rouge, when you were children."

  "Pigtails. Freckles. Playing on the landing. The usual cliches."

  "You can work on it, Samuel."

  "Yes."

  "You don't like the idea?"

  "I told you, I don't recall her. It makes me uneasy—a kid from my home town, when I was at Yale—and she's now one of the wealthiest women in the world, thanks to that helicopter failure."

  "You'll get along fine," McFee had assured him. "You always do, with women."

  Durell had read and memorized Memo Kappa/2260, and dossiers on Gustl Kramer, I. R. Godorov, and Chu Li. He had also been given No. 70/KVK on Ollie Olliver, Bill Anderson, and James Stanley Dodd. Not to mention Richard Coppitt, Amanda's stepson.

  He'd stood quietly for a moment by the dark red window draperies in McFee's suite. The rain in Zurich was depressing. Durell was a tall man, with thick black hair streaked with gray at the temples. He was heavy in musculature, conservative in dress, with a dark gray suit, a white button-down shirt, a narrow knitted gray necktie. His face was impassive, giving nothing away; a gambler's face, betraying no emotion. For all his size he moved with a light, easy grace. The sun of Malaysia, from where he had recently returned, had burned his rugged features dark.

  McFee had bought him lunch at Burkli Platz, near the Alpen Quai Bridge.

  "A million dollars?" Durell had asked.

  "Oh, we've spent more on this one."

  "And Dodd is really gone?"

  "He didn't steal it, if that's what you think."

  "But Ollie, in Fez, is a greedy man."

  "Yes. We'll see. You'U check it aU out."

  He had been given a diplomatic passport and enough Moroccan currency in dirhams to pay for everything. McFee had been unusually generous. It was the missing million dollars of taxpayers' money, he thought.

  And Dodd, of course.

  A good man, Dodd.

  A gray Simca was waiting for him at Anfa. There were two highway maps in the glove compartment, one a Michelin No. 169, in two parts, and the other a Carte des Voies de Communication, published by the IGN of Morocco, in Rabat. The second map showed mountain reliefs; the Michelin was better on road conditions. Both were marked to show the routes south across the Atlas ranges into the valleys of the Dra, the Ziz, and the pass of Tizi n'Test, connecting into the pre-Saharan link going east and west, main route P-32, the Grande Rocade du Sud.

  Below that was the emptiness of the Sahara. Jimmy Dodd was somewhere down there.

  In the envelope with his passport were several cheques-essence offering a special tourist discount for gasoline. He filled the Simca's tank with the daily maximum, 30 DH worth, then drove through Casablanca's modem, palm-lined streets to the Banque Morocaine on the Boulevard Mohammed V to change some larger notes. The city's white villas, towering air-conditioned skyscrapers, and modem medinas looked prosperous. He took the coastal road toward Rabat along the plain of Zenata where, beyond an occasional, grazing camel, the Atlantic sparkled blue and white.

  He remembered that Casablanca was called Ed Dar el Baida in Arabic, and that the Portuguese had changed the name when they cleaned out the pirates at Anfa centuries ago. A cool salt wind moved through the cloudless sky and over the empty beaches. Beyond the bridge over the NeflSqh, he took S-222. TraflBc was light up to Mohamme-dia. It was early afternoon, and he had plenty of time to reach Fez before nightfall, when he was to meet Ollie Olliver.

  He had just passed Mohammedia when he spotted the car that followed him.

  It was an old black high-bodied Jag. In the rear-view mirror, he saw that there were two men in it, wearing European suits. He tumed off into the souk at Mohammedia, and the Jaguar tooled by. He wandered for fifteen minutes among the tented stalls and country people, studying the brass scales heaped high witli dark red henna, the chicken coops, a tethered baby camel, plaited baskets, pans of flat Arabic bread, a high charcoal meat cooker. When he took to the road again, the Jaguar appeared behind him at once.

  In Rabat, dominated by the Tour Hassan and the fortress walls of the Oudaias kasbah overlooking Sale across the river, he pulled into the Rabat Hilton near the Chellah and asked the attendant for a different car to hire. The attendant wore an elaborately braided Moroccan costume with turned-up yellow leather hahouchcs. Service took twenty minutes, and he listened to a guide explain to a small group of tourists that Abd-el-Mummin, the first Almohade sultan, had named the city Ribat el Fath, Fort of Victory, in preparation for an attack on Spain. The attendant showed up with a '68 yellow Ford. While it was being fueled, he used the public telephone in the Hilton lobby to call a number in Fez.

  ''Olliver," a man said flatly.

  "Cajun here. Who tagged me with the Jag?"

  "Really, Sam—"

  "A black Jag. Two men. Persistent."

  ''I see," said Olliver.

  "You don't see a thing. I'm blown at the start."

  "No harm done. Our opposite numbers are amateurs. They aren't playing that way. Just come along. We'll meet at six thirty. You have all your other instructions?"

  "Why couldn't you go after Dodd, OUie?"

  The telephone voice said sadly, "Sorry, Cajun. Tve got a busted leg."

  "How?"

  "Stupid accident. Don't read too much into it. You field people are always too damned cautious. Or maybe suspicious, hey?"

  "It's one way to stay alive," Durell said.

  He hung up.

  He side-tracked going west, past the Royal Palace with its Moorish facade, green lawns, and exotically uniformed guards; then he swung back to crowded souks and took the main highway, P-1, to Khemisset and Meknes on the way to Fez. The afternoon turned hot and sultry. The Ford's air-conditioning did not work.

  He did not see the Jaguar agam, but they hit him at Volubilis, only a short run above Meknes.

  Close to the entrance to the old Roman ruins, the left front tire burst with appalling suddenness. He was doing sixty-five at the time, and there were no other cars on the road except for a CTM busload of tourists near the ancient walls. He knew at once, as he fought the wheel, that it was not a simple tire failure. For several seconds the Ford careened dangerously on the edge of a roadside ditch. He teased the wheel with care, touching the brakes lightly, touching them again. The car suddenly slewed, skidded sidewise, and hit the dirt on the other side of the highway. Something underneath the chassis made a loud cracking noise, as if of tortured metal; the Ford lifted, slanting on two wheels, and came down with a crash and a cloud of dust.

  Durell turned the key, elbowed his door open, and slid out onto the grassy embankment. Crickets chirped. The sun was hot. There were women working in a nearby olive grove. They were dressed in black, swathed in their robes and veils. He got up and ran for the museum entrance, and thought he saw a flicker of reflected sunlight in the trees of the Zerhoun hills. The ticket collector looked at
him with mild curiosity.

  "Did I hear something?" the man asked in Arabic.

  "No."

  "Welcome to Volubilis, sir. Will you want a guide?"

  "No, shoukran. Thank you."

  Durell took a ticket and walked into the two-thousand-year-old remains of the Roman capital of ancient Tingitan Mauretania. His anger slowly ebbed. He thought he heard another car on the road, but turned his attention to making evasive movements. He was sure it had been a rifle shot that blew* out the tire. He felt like an insect pinned to a display board.

  He walked quickly through the area, keeping close to the crumbled ruins of the Gallien Baths, then crossed the mosaic floor of a long-dead aristocrat's house, showing Orpheus and his lyre. The olive trees in the hills twinkled silvery in the warm sun. Near the Arch of Caracalla, he caught up with the tourists from the CTM bus and joined them. The guide glanced at his tall figure, smiled, and accepted some dirham notes from Durell. For several minutes he stayed patiently with the group, his nerve ends tingling. For a time, he could see the road and his car, looking innocent enough under the trees. Through the open ruins of the House of the Dog—the green bronze statue was now in the pre-Islamic museum in Rabat—he studied the hills, the orchards, and the highway. Nothing looked suspicious. The guide droned on about the House of Flavius Germanus and then moved toward the hill crowned by the ruins of the Temple of Saturn. A cool breeze blew suddenly from the north. The tourists plodded dutifully along, festooned with cameras. Durell dropped back and stood alone. He was hit again.

  He did not hear the shot nor see the man with the rifle. He felt the impact high on his left arm, and it jerked him forward a little. At the same time a man suddenly appeared from behind a pile of broken bricks. He had a thin knife in his hand.

  The man looked like a professional guide, but Durell had no time to wonder. The look of surprise and disappointment when Durell didn't go down from the rifle shot gave way to anger, and he came at Durell quickly and purposefully, the blade up, spiraling for Durell's belly. Durell dropped to his right knee, his hand reaching for the rough stones, and came up with a handful of gravel that he spurted into the other's face. There was a grunt, a curse, and this time the knife slashed for Durell's throat.

  He thought. There are two of them — the rifleman and this clod. They want to make sure I'm dead.

  His heel shot out, and caught the attacker in the groin. Then he was on his feet and upright as the man doubled over. Durell clenched his hands and brought them down hard on the back of the other's neck. There was a thin cracking sound, the knife flew to one side, and his assailant went down on his face with a broken spine.

  The episode had taken no more than ten seconds.

  The hills still looked innocent. He sat down. His shoulder burned where the bullet had creased the skin. He took off his coat and used his handkerchief to tie up the slight wound. His arm might be stiff by nightfall, but nothing more. In Fez he would ask Olliver to have a doctor lock at it.

  He was very careful when he checked the dead man's clothing. There were a few dirhams in coins and currency which he took without compunction. The label on the man's shabby brown suit was from Tangier. The shoes were Spanish leather. The face, congested now with dead blood, was just a face. It smiled at him.

  Durell stood up and saw the tourists at a distance, heading for their bus. He joined them with a long stride. Through the museum gate he walked down toward his disabled car.

  The black Jaguar was parked beside it.

  Two men in black suits, looking like undertakers, were smoking dark cigarettes and waiting for him.

  They had changed his tire for him.

  2

  "Si Durell?"

  "You have the advantage," he said carefully.

  They eyed the slight rip in his sleeve. "Have you been having some diflSculty?"

  "A small accident." They hadn't told him their names or business and didn't look as if they meant to. "Thanks for fixing the car."

  They were Moroccans, both of the same height, and could have been twins, but one was a little fatter and more officious. The fat one seemed to be in charge. He hesitated, then flipped open a card case with the practiced gesture of policemen the world over. Durell sighed.

  "We are from Security, Si Durell. My government is anxious to cooperate in any way with your people—"

  "I'm just a minor diplomat," said Durell. "On a holiday in your beautiful country."

  "Yes. Of course. What kind of an accident did you have, sir?"

  "A flat tire, obviously."

  "The tire had a bullet hole in it, sir."

  "Really? I can't believe it."

  All they had to do now, Durell thought grimly, was to take him in. Somebody had a big mouth somewhere. He thought it was OlHver, and was pretty sure it was Olliver. He wondered about it, but he didn't say anything.

  *'We simply wish," said the fat one suddenly, ''to make certain that your visit to our country is reasonably uneventful. When the time comes for you to depart, we would be happy to know that you are leaving safely and unharmed."

  'That is my fervent wish also," said Durell.

  They turned and walked off a little way and talked together, looking at him with flat, official eyes. They were more hostile than friendly, he decided. In a moment they came trudging back through the dust by the road.

  "You may go on. Please be careful. If you need our help, we are here to cooperate."

  The other one added, "Who would want to disable your car, Si DureU?"

  "I have no idea. Are you sure it was a bullet hole in my tire?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Careless hunters?" he suggested.

  "Yes. Or incompetent."

  "I hardly think that," Durell said.

  It took an hour to get through Meknes, the old Imperial City built by Moulay Ismail, the first of the Alouite rulers. Near the Er Rouha Mosque, hard by the King's Stables, he was sure he had lost the policemen. It was only a matter of time, however, until someone stumbled over the assassin's body in the Volubilis ruins; they would lean hard on him after that. There was loud, noisy trafl&c in the odorous souks near the Bab Mansour at the El Hedim Square. Once through the huge Moorish gates and the bastioned walls of the medina, crowded with bell-ringing water carriers, he edged the dusty Ford through streams of donkeys, strollers, occasional Cadillacs, tented shops, and finally crossed the bridge over the Oued Boufekrane. At last he picked up P-1 again and drove east toward Fez.

  No one bothered him, and he covered the thirty-eight miles in half an hour.

  Homeless, Durell had made the world his home ever since he had begun working for K Section, that anonymous, trouble-shooting branch of the CIA. He knew intimately the dark comers and alleys of the great cities as well as the damp green dangers of its jungles and the emptiness of its deserts. You never turned a comer, never opened a door, without care. Death might be waiting anywhere. It was a dark, desperate, silent war in which no bugles blew for the dead or missing. His survival factor, according to the computer in the basement at No. 20 Annapolis Street in Washington, had long since dipped below the danger line. There were times when he wanted to quit, when he longed for the relatively normal life of a suburbanite with a wife and a home. He had gone too far beyond that now, and he knew there was no retum. It would not be permitted. In the files of the Russian KGB headquarters at No. 2 Dzherzhinsky Square in Moscow, and at the Black House, L-5's Central in Peking, his dossier was marked with red tabs which made him a high-priority target. General Dickinson McFee, that small gray man who commanded K Section, had long ago given him authority to operate with "extreme prejudice, according to discretion." Which meant he was authorized to kill.

  Generally, Durell disdained the gimmicky devices dreamed up by the lab boys of K Section. He could kill with his hands, a needle, a rolled newspaper and he had done so, when necessary, either to save the assignment or to save himself, and he tried not to think of it afterward. Too many good men he had known were gone, vanished, d
ue to a moment's lack of caution, a diversion of attention, an emotional bias.

  All he knew of the present job was that Jimmy Dodd, who worked out of Casablanca Central, had gone into the Moroccan Sahara to pay someone the enormous sum of one miUion dollars for something. The money had come from K Section's General Fund. Now the money was missing, and so was Agent Dodd. In Durell's business you often saw only one tenth of the iceberg. You worked with vast dark areas in the picture, filling them in painfully, or being filled in on them by Control as necessary. It was best not to know too much. On the other hand, he often argued he could not operate intelligently without a reasonably coherent picture of the situation.

  He meant to get that picture from Olliver in Fez.

  3

  From the crest of El Kolla Hill to the shadowed, lamplit alleys of the medinas, Fez presents an eternal mystery, a city cloaked in enigmatic glory and history for the Moslem world. There were luxurious hotels, ranging from the Palais Jamai, once the home of a Grand Vizier, gleaming American motels for tourists, and run-down hostels and incredible hovels near the noisy, crowded souks. You can eat the finest of Continental and French cuisine at the Dar Saada in the medina on Rue Attarine, and the Palais de Fes, or take your chances with steaming bowls of couscous and green Arab mint tea at street stalls.

  Fez consists of two towns, the oldest being Fez el Bali, founded by Idriss and containing the most famous mosques and medersas, the Arabic universities, as well as the Dar Batha palace and the Boujeloud Gardens. The second area, Fez Djedid, founded by the Merinides, holds the Great Mosque and the armory known as the Makina. The mellah, or Jewish Quarter, stands behind its separate waUs with its own fine babs, or gates.

  The kissaria is the luxury shopping center of Fez. In the little covered lanes nearby are stalls selling lanterns, brocades, copper and brassware, Coca-Cola, radios, and American magazines and paperbacks. Durell drove to the Terrace of the Merinides, the panoramic road encircling the city, and looked down at the first capital of Morocco within red stone walls—the white roofs and twisted streets and alleys, the tall needles of the minarets and the green roof of the Karaouine. Fez was founded in 808 by Idriss II on the banks of the Oued Fez, and populated by Arab families from Spain and the Karaouine. Heavily Moorish, it grew rich on the conquest of Iberia, and still reflected its ancient and brilliant glory.