Assignment Madeleine Read online

  “Shut up,” Durell said. “Let’s go.”

  The truck was still parked in the shade under the elm where they had left it. Madeleine was on her feet beside the tailgate, shading her eyes against the sun as she watched them return. A hot wind funneled down the wadi and fluttered the short sleeves of her blouse. Her mouth thinned as she saw L'Heureux walking back a few steps ahead of Durell. She looked at Jane and Chet, and anger tightened the fine planes of her face. “Charley?”

  “It’s all right, Mad. It just didn’t come off.”

  “What happened? I gave you your chance.”

  He patted her cheek. “I got distracted, is all.”

  “By that girl?”

  “Sure, by the girl.” He shrugged. “Don’t go making noises at me, Mad.” His French was laced with a strong Canuck accent.

  “You threw away your chance to escape because of this girl?” Madeleine’s voice trembled with anger. She looked venomous. She yanked her arm free when L’Heureux held it. “You fool! I did what I could for you! It was going to be so simple ”

  “Too simple, Mad. Where did you get the key to those bracelets?”

  She looked defiantly at Durell. “I took them from him.”

  “You think you got light fingers, eh?” L’Heureux turned to Durell. “You knew she swiped the key from you, didn’t you? She thinks she’s good. She’s had lots of training picking pockets. She worked that racket for a long time in Algiers and Marseilles, before she got to Paris and took the modeling job and then worked for Brumont. Is she really good, Durell?”

  Durell said flatly, “Good enough.”

  “You knew she took the key oil you, didn’t you? You let her have it. I know you, Durell. Nobody could lift anything oft you unless you wanted it to happen. It was too easy. Why did you want me to get away?”

  “You can figure that out for yourself,” Durell said.

  “Not to kill me while I was escaping. You don’t want that.”

  “No."

  L’Heureux started to speak again, then shut his mouth into a hard, angry line. He muttered, “I guess maybe I got to figure you a little differently, Durell.”

  He climbed into the truck and stretched out on one of the benches. Madeleine stared at Durell in defiance. ‘You yourself ended our truce. I told you how I feel about Charley. I warned you I would help him.” She drew a deep, uncertain breath. The sun made burnished gold in her red hair. “Did you know when I stole the key from you? Is Charley right?”

  “Yes,” Durell said. “But you’ll sit up front with me from now on, Madeleine.” He reached into the truck and found a coil of rope and handed it to Chet Larkin. “Tie him up. Wrists behind his back this time. Make the knots strong. Can you do it?”

  “My pleasure," Chet muttered.

  “Don’t feel ashamed because he put you down,” Durell said. “He’s put down better men than you.”

  Chet said nothing. L’Heureux sat up on the truck bench and was impassive as Chet bound his wrists with the rope. The sun had reached up high in the sky now and they stood in the full glare of its terrible heat as Durell waited for Chet to jump down from the tailgate.

  “Was the road ahead clear?” Durell asked.

  “I didn’t see anything. There’s nothing alive out that way.”

  “All right. We’ll eat while we’re riding. You and your wife stay in the back here with L’Heureux. Keep him on one side, you stay on the other. Here’s your carbine. Keep it trained on him.”

  Durell walked around to the front of the truck and searched the wadi for Talek, the goumier driver. He had left the Arab on watch at the top of the cliff. There was no sign of the man.

  “Talek!”

  His voice echoed down the rocky ravine and was lost in the wilderness of sun and stone. There was no answer. He searched the ravine with his eyes. The hot wind came in quickening gusts, and sand hissed along the stones at his feet.

  “Talek!”

  Madeleine got out of the truck and stared ahead, her face showing nothing, Durell walked away up the wadi, to where it opened onto a flat area of terrain bisected by the thin, fragile line of a highway arrowing north and south. Telephone poles and lines stood forlornly in the blazing sun. Durell knew the lines had been cut, although they looked all right in this particular spot. The main road that Chet had scouted was of crushed stone, raised a little on a two-foot embankment above the level of the desert floor. There was nothing in sight in either direction. No sign of the goumier driver. He turned and walked back to the truck.

  Madeleine still stood by the cab, not looking at him.

  “He’s gone,” she said flatly.

  “How do you know?”

  “He looked at the motor and walked off, while you were with Charley back there.”

  “Which way did he go?"

  She pointed toward the bleak highway ahead. “There.”

  Durell went around to the front of the truck and lifted the hood. Even before he examined the engine, he knew what he would find.

  The distributor cap was gone.

  There was no way to start the truck. They were stranded.

  Chapter Thirteen

  DURELL took a cup of coffee from the thermos Jane Larkin handed him. There was a knapsack of sandwiches and two bottles of Algerian wine and a bottle of Martel. There was a gallon thermos jug of water that Talek had failed to pour out onto the sand, and Durell thought grimly that he should be grateful for small favors. The rest of the picture was clear enough. Talek had betrayed them. He belonged to the rebels and had enlisted with the French only to act as a spy for the guerrillas. But the big question was whether he worked for the extremists nr for el-Abri’s forces. The answer here was important. It might mean the difference between life and death.

  Durell sipped his coffee slowly. In this business you took calculated risks time and again, judging the chances on the weight of all the facts you could gather in hand. Now and then, however, all your best calculations could be upset by something totally unlocked for. Such as Jane Larkin. He hadn’t expected her to interfere with Charley the way she had. If she hadn't screamed, Durell would not have interrupted the scene.

  He had deliberately made it easy for Madeleine to steal the handcuff keys. Perhaps too easy. L‘Heureux had caught on to that maneuver. But it was doubtful if he had suspected it until the very last moment.

  Not that Durell wanted L’Heureux to escape. But his job here went beyond simply escorting the man hack to civilization and adequate punishment. There was all that American currency floating around the area. The money wasn’t important in itself. The thing that was important was what the money might do. He hadn’t forgotten a single word el-Abri had told him about the money. He had been thinking about it ever since.

  There were Frenchmen in Algiers who profited by this war, who might wish to prolong it or to win it without compromise, without yielding to any single one legitimate aspiration of the other side. It was to their advantage to fan the fires of terror and violence to the point where no compromise could be effected.

  Finding the American money in the hands of the rebels could do that. Propaganda could make much of it, all wrong. The United States could be accused of secretly financing and abetting the rebellion, perhaps on a deal to gain certain oil concessions in the Sahara. It was not too fantastic that some of the inflamed and angry and tormented men would believe it. If pressure were being exerted by the saner, more rational men in this country to end the war, such a propaganda campaign could make them close ranks, join the shadowy few without understanding how they were being manipulated, and the war would go on and on, without visible end.

  The money had to be found, and quickly.

  It had to be removed quietly, returned to the proper authorities.

  Durell had narrowed his thinking down to one point. L’Heureux knew where the money was hidden. There wasn’t time to take him back to Paris and interrogate him and hope to get that information from him. L’Heureux had his own goal. He wanted the money
for himself. He was playing a dangerous double game, one he would inevitably lose, because if he crossed the men who had hired him and stole the money, they would certainly track him down. There would be no corner of the world too remote for him to remain in hiding from those who would search for him. But L’Heureux didn’t know that. Or if he knew it, he was still confident.

  The nub of the thing was the lack of time. L’Heureux had to be made to lead him to the money, and quickly. He had hoped that by letting Madeleine free him, L’Heureux would take off and make for the place where it would be found. A calculated risk, and one that had gone wrong.

  Now there was the stranding here with a useless truck.

  Durell sipped again at his coffee, thinking it out. It had been twenty minutes since Talek disappeared. It was possible to pursue him, and an even chance they could overtake him and retrieve the distributor cap. But Durell knew his own limitations in this wasteland. First, there was no way to guess which direction Talek had chosen. You couldn't track a man for any distance in this rocky terrain. And obviously, Talek’s chances for survival were better than their own. He knew where he was going. He knew where he could meet the rebels. He had only taken one canteen of water, so his destination couldn’t be too far off.

  According to the chart Captain DeGrasse had given him, the nearest place was the oasis village of Baroumi, ten miles southwest of here. Ten miles was not far for truck travel. But it might be impossible to get there on foot. There was L’Heureux and the need for watchfulness, and there were the two women. He didn’t know if he could push them along on a ten-mile walk in this heat and desolation. He knew he could count on Chet Larkin. He didn’t underestimate Chet simply because L’Heureux had beaten him so quickly and viciously. Chet would be careful now. He could be of help. Still, ten miles wasn’t easy. They’d need luck if they could make it.

  And even if they reached Baroumi, Durell thought, there was no guessing at their reception. The Moslems there could be rebels, or they could be loyal. Or they might owe their allegiance to cl-Abri, which was even more likely. Certainly they would be aimed and suspicious.

  But there was also the reasonable certainty that somewhere in the village there would be a vehicle of one kind or another.

  There was no other place to go.

  It had to be Baroumi.

  Durell uncorked fire brandy bottle and added a small slug of liquor to the coffee remaining in his cup, and finished the sandwich Jane Larkin had given him. The others were huddled in the thin slab of shade cast by the truck body. They looked reluctant to leave even the brief familiarity and illusion of safety the truck gave them. L’Heureux alone seemed comfortable and unconcerned. He sat with his back against a rear wheel and had his eyes closed. Madeleine stood a little distance from him. Jane Larkin was trying to talk to her husband, but Chet had his back turned to her. The boy had been badly hurt by his wife’s behavior, Durell thought. But he would get over that. They would all have to pull together and cooperate if they had any hope of getting away from here alive.

  He looked at Jane’s shoes. They were oxfords, of dark brown leather, and sensible enough. Her lightweight slacks and blouse would give her reasonable protection against the sun. Chet wore boots. L’Heureux had been given Army-issue shoes, tough and sturdy. Madeleine wore low-heeled shoes, too. They were all right in that respect, at any rate.

  Jane looked up and walked over to him.

  “What are we going to do? We can’t stay here, can we?”

  “We’re going to have to walk out of it. Can you make it?”

  “Back to Marbruk?”

  “That’s twenty miles,” he said. “I doubt if we’d last. No, we can go on to Baroumi. It’s a little village not too far ahead. I was there once, as a matter of fact, during the war.” Durell paused. “If we’re lucky, we might find a car or jeep we could use.”

  “But the guerrillas might be there, too,” she objected.

  There was still a trace of shock and confusion in her eyes, but her voice was steady, almost defiant. “What do we do then?"

  “We’ll hide out and try to steal something without getting caught.” He smile at her and saw her mouth lift in response. It was only a small sign, but it gave him more confidence in her. “Do you think you can walk ten kilometers?”

  “Yes, I can do it,” she said.

  “Better stay with your husband while we’re hiking,” Durell said. “He can cover you if something breaks wrong.”

  “He doesn’t want me near him. Nothing happened, you know, but he thinks it was my fault.”

  “He’ll get over it. You’ll have to help each other. I’m counting on Chet to keep an eye on L’Heureux from here on out. Each of you will have to carry something, too. Water, the thermos jugs, the knapsack.” Durell turned. “Madeleine?”

  “I am here,” the redheaded girl said. “I understand what is needed.”

  He met her topaz eyes. Hostility had died in them. She knew what they faced. The distance didn’t seem too much, perhaps a three-or four-hour hike. But across this wasteland, the road could seem infinite.

  “Did you know about Talek?” he asked.

  “No. Not that.”

  “How soon do you think the rebels will come back for us?” He was curious to know what her thoughts might be.

  ‘Perhaps they will not come here at all,” Madeleine said. “They may leave it to the sun and the desert to do their work for them.”

  “Maybe. What do you know about Baroumi?”

  “I have never been there.”

  “Let’s hope you get a look at it today.”

  She looked down at her feet and drew a deep breath. She seemed to be having trouble meeting Durell’s eyes. “I know something about the place, though.” The hot, scorching wind blew her red hair. Her face looked pale, shining with perspiration. Her Paris glamor had worn off, along with the brittle sophistication she had exhibited when they first met. Something much more elemental lurked under her smooth, tawny flesh as she walked around the truck with him. “Charley has been to Baroumi," she said suddenly.

  “How do you know?”

  “He spoke it earlier. It is where he would like to go. That is why you let me steal the handcuff keys from you, is it not? So you could track him while he imagined he was escaping. Well, that isn’t necessary now. You see, I am being honest with you. He wants to go to Baroumi.”

  “Why?” Durell asked. “What’s there for him?”

  “It is the money,” she said flatly. Her voice was lacking in spirit all at once. “You know about it. Why play games with me? You are more clever than I can ever hope to be. And better than Charley in this business. I can see that now.”

  Durell studied the girl’s face, then looked at Jane. Jane was watching L’Heureux, still sprawled in the shade cast by the disabled truck.

  Madeleine’s voice shook slightly. “Charley tried to take Jane with him, didn’t he? He has me, but I am not enough. He is so sure of me, so confident that I will help him and do anything and ask no questions. He thinks I will always accept the crumbs he cares to throw my way. He thinks he knows me, you see. But he is mistaken. He doesn’t know me at all. You and I, Durell, are much more alike. We understand each other, you and I. And you have no illusions about me, which is a better basis for understanding than Charley’s attitude toward women.

  “You knew what L’Heureux was like when you sold out to him,” Durell said. “You crossed Brumont and the Deuxieme Bureau when they assigned you to work on him. You said you were in love with L’Heureux.”

  “I know nothing about love,” she said curtly. “You Americans are much too romantic. I know all about men, but I know nothing of love. It does not exist. Passion, yes. I know what it is to want someone. But this is not love. And Charley has never loved me.”

  “You tried to help him escape."

  “I was willing to help him up to that point, yes. Because it was really for myself that I did these things. But he threw away his chance because of a pretty face And a
new figure. He doesn’t fool me by saying he was suspicious of your intentions. It was that lane. His conceit is limitless. He thinks I will accept his foolish mistake and forget about it and humbly creep back to him when he crooks his little finger for me. But he is mistaken."

  “Tell me about the money,” Durell said. “Do you think it’s in Baroumi?”

  “I am sure of it.”

  “Where can it be found?”

  Her eyes were pale gold, narrowed against the hot sunshine. “First tell me why you are here in Algeria. What happens here should be of no concern to Americans. There is an honest movement here toward freedom. We want to be equal with others in the world. Who are you to condemn it and work against it?”

  “We don’t condemn. We don’t act for or against it,” Durell said. “I’m here to take a murderer back to justice. The fact that he happens to have been your lover is not my business. Your own foolishness tied your fate to his, Madeleine. If he happens to have the morals and lusts of an alley cat, that too is your problem, not mine.”

  “I want to help you,” she said suddenly.

  “Because you're angry with Charley now? You’ll get over that, I think,” Durell said.

  She shook her head. “No, you do not understand. I know the truth now. I know it was only a dream, an illusion, this plan I had with Charley. We were going to take the money and go to South America with it. It is what I have always dreamed of. But now I know what would really happen if we were successful. He would leave me. Perhaps he would kill me. The first pretty woman to come along would make him throw me aside.” Madeleine’s voice caught, “I was a fool to think I could control a man like Charley. Some men are easy, but others, I have learned, are best avoided. Perhaps I wanted to believe that it would be all right with Charley. But I know better now. I saw how he looked at Jane. I know he has no more use for me. I am an expel‘: on how men think, Durell. I am not wrong.”

  “So now you turn against him.”

  She shrugged. “What would you have me do? I hope to salvage what I can. Perhaps you will help me when you see Brumont again."