Assignment Star Stealers Read online

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "You have some singing birds in your private caliphate. Cesar admitted as much. Get rid of them. Or her."

  "Listen, you son of a bitch—"

  Durell hung up.

  6

  There was an elaborate, ornate bolt and lock on Durell's hotel-room door. He checked it, locked it, went to the windows and looked down. The reed awnings over the lane below had been rolled up, and he could see the twisting byway between the crowded houses and shops leading into the open square of the souk nearby. He didn't think anybody could climb up the wall of the hotel into the windows, although there were small ornamental iron grills just below the sill that might offer good handholds. He tried closing the windows, but the air in the room quickly became stifling and hot. He opened them again, adjusted his bed, went to his chair, kicked off his shoes, and tried to sleep sitting up with his gun in his hand, resting on his thigh.

  He closed his eyes and the telephone rang.

  "Sam?" a woman said.

  "Here."

  "Sam Durell? Really?"

  "Yes."

  There was a hesitancy, a lack of ease in the woman*s voice. "This is Amanda. Amanda Coppitt."

  He sat up straighter in the darkness of his room and looked at his watch. It was only 11:10 p.m. He smelled vodka in his room from Colonel Skoll. He didn't recognize the woman's voice, but there was no reason why he should, since he wouldn't recognize Amanda Coppitt if he fell over her, he thought, not having seen her since she was a child in Bayou Peche Rouge.

  "Where are you?" he asked.

  "Here. In Fez. The Palais Jamai.'*

  Naturally, he thought.

  "I want to see you," he said. "May I? Now?"

  "That's what I called you for."

  "I'll be right over."

  "Sam." Amanda Coppitt came toward him gracefully, both hands outstretched in greeting. "I'd remember you and recognize you anywhere." Her smile was polite, a gesture, a stretching of the full lips, nothing more. Her greenish eyes measured him. There were violet shadows under them. "Please. Come in. General McFee says you drink bourbon."

  He would not have remembered her. The last time he had seen her, she had been a child in Bayou Peche Rouge. He had been raised by his old Grandpa Jonathan, aboard the hulk of the Trois Belles, a relic of the Mississippi side-wheeler days. Now and then he'd been aware of her playing in the dust next to the landing under the moss-draped live oaks. It seemed a long time ago— another time, another world. She had worn glossy copper-toned pigtails then, and her Cajun idioms had peppered her words like the freckles on her upturned child's nose.

  She had changed the pigtails into a woman's heavy, upswept French coiffure. The Cajun accent, like his own, had become cultivated and almost Bostonian. The freckles were gone in a skin as smooth as cream. She was tall, and her figure astonished him with its rich femininity under her silken slacks and little bolero-type jacket. Her mouth was soft and full, her green eyes long and almost oriental, uptilted at the comers, and there were lines of strain and grief around them. As if she were aware of his scrutiny, she reached for a pair of tinted, jeweled glasses on a table in her suite and slipped them on. She acted embarrassed, ill at ease.

  "Do have a drink. Help yourself." She waved to a bar in the richly decorated room. Moorish arches of carved woodwork in intricate designs shaped the windows. A single huge red hibiscus floated in a copper bowl. "I only just arrived here," she said. "Stephenson arranged the trip. He's really been indispensable to me, since Han—since Hannibal died."

  "Did you come here with Stephenson?"

  "No, I flew alone. One of the company's helicopters brought me here from Casablanca."

  She spoke of the conveniences and luxuries of her almost unlimited wealth as a matter of fact. She had been married to the middle-aged electronics industrialist for ten years. Since Hannibal Coppitt's accidental death, she had been in seclusion, an object of newspaper and TV reporters' avid attention.

  "Do you really remember me, Sam?" she asked.

  "A little, Amanda."

  "I—I think this is good for me. To help you find Richard, my stepson." She smiled that humorless smile again. He wished she hadn't put on the sunglasses. "He's older than I. Richard, I mean. I never came to know him very well. My husband and I—we made our own lives together."

  "You've come a long way from Bayou Peche Rouge."

  Her face was solemn. "Hannibal changed me. Or his money changed me. I miss him terribly, Sam. I don't think I'll ever—I loved him very, very much. Hannibal was wonderful to me."

  He got up and poured himself a drink at the polished bar, looked at the hibiscus, and watched her clasp her hands before her. She turned and walked to the windows.

  The suite was hushed, scented, and elegant. She said, 'This General McFee—is he your boss, Sam?"

  "Yes."

  "He had a long talk with me. He appealed to my patriotism." She smiled. "Are you so patriotic, Sam? Oh, it's good to see someone from home. You left Peche Rouge so long ago, though. I never thought you knew of my existence."

  Her suit was dark gray Imen, perhaps a concession to her widowhood. She had taken her husband's death badly, he recalled, retiring from all Washington social life and returning to the Louisiana bayous, where McFee had found her and put to her K Section's need of her.

  "You look as if you disapprove of me," she said, and lighted a cigarette without waiting for his lighter. Her long, fine hands trembled.

  "Not at all, Amanda."

  "Or the money I've inherited?"

  "We've both changed quite a bit."

  "Or my marrying such an older man? It was a miracle for me, a wonder that I'U never get over being grateful for."

  "I was impressed."

  "You've never married, have you, Sam?"

  "No."

  "Then you wouldn't know what I'm talking about."

  He thought she might be correct. He finished his bourbon and decided they had started out all wrong. He was keenly aware of her attraction as a woman, but he didn't doubt the sincerity of her grief. Again Amanda smiled her meaningless smile. She had good bone structure in her face. Her tinted glasses mirrored the elegance of the hotel room when she turned her head back toward him.

  "We're both hometown folks, though, Sam. I used to admire you so. Going off to Yale, then working for the government—I had no idea what you did." She was not being flirtatious, he decided. Her mourning, her withdrawal from life was genuine. She smoked her cigarette nervously. "This is very difficult for me," she said. "I don't want to hurt Richard. I only want to help him."

  "We want to help him, too. We want him back."

  "I told McFee I would help, contingent on my meeting you. It's so difficult. Everyone watches me, waiting to see what I'll do, eventually. Stephenson watches me, too. He nms the conglomerate, of course. IVe learned a little about it, but my mind—I couldn't concentrate on Han's business. AU I know is that I have a small army of—of executives and assistants who jump to help me, if I ask for the slightest thing. It's—awkward. I just want to be left alone."

  He was silent.

  She said, "I don't like being a rich widow."

  "Yes."

  She inhaled deeply and crushed out the cigarette with distaste. She stood up again, and walked across the red carpet and stood looldng out over the city of Fez through the tall, narrow windows. No sounds came into the suite from the outside world. It was like a silken cocoon.

  "Hannibal wanted Richard in the electronics corporation as an executive," Amanda said. "In Aerospace Electronics, a subdivision of Hannibal Coppitt Industries. Richard resented me, I think. But he was always a funny— strange—man. He went to work for the government, independently, on United States satellites. A genius, they tell me. I like to think that he was happy for Hannibal, for our marriage, though. And he—he's a defector?"

  "We don't know," said Durell.

  "Working for the enemy?"

  "Working for himself, we think."


  "And you want me to help you to find him? Bring him back? Win he go to prison?"

  "No."

  "Will he stand trial?"

  "I doubt it."

  "But you want me to—to help you trap him—and bring him back?"

  "It's rather vital. We're bleeding."

  She drew a deep breath and came away from the window. "I loved my husband. I still do. I'm glad he—he didn't know about his son—what Richard has done. I've died a little, too, with Han."

  "I can understand how you feel, Amanda, but I don't think it will last. Give yourself time."

  "Everyone says that." She was briefly impatient. "But I owe some loyalty to Richard, for Han's sake."

  Amanda was very beautiful, Durell thought. He watched the highlights in her smooth, coppery hair as she moved her head and looked down at her hands in her lap. He felt a surprising ache for her sorrow, for what he had to do, for what might have to be done to her. She was lovely, rich, powerful. She had come a long way from the girl with pigtails, playing in the dust of the bayou landings.

  She turned back to him and studied him from behind her blinding glasses. "I can't believe that Richard is a traitor," she said flatly.

  "We don't know what he is," Durell admitted. "But we must find out. And to do that, I must find him."

  "Yes. They've put you onto me as an old friend, a man I used to think was—I had a puppy-love crush on you, did you know that?"

  "No. Amanda—"

  "I owe Hannibal the need to protect his son from his own foolishness. And you frighten me a little, Sam. We've both changed, that's true. I know your real business. They've asked you to use me, perhaps in order to kill Richard? To kill that marvelous, brilliant mind?"

  "No one will kill him, if I can help it."

  She stood up and walked back and forth, took another cigarette, again lighted it before he could help her, then came back across the room toward him.

  "I've had a letter from Richard, you know."

  "When?"

  "A week ago."

  "Where was it mailed?"

  "From here. In Fez."

  "Where did you receive it?"

  "It was forwarded to me in Zurich from New York. Steve flew it over, himself. I don't know what I'd do without Steve. He's been marvelous. He knows how I feel about—about everything."

  "What did Richard want?"

  "He wants to see me. No, thafs not right. We were never very—friendly. He lives in a world far beyond mine, he's so brilliant. And yet he's always been so naive about matter-of-fact things. I suppose a genius has to pay for his mentality, being so different from the rest of us ordinary mortals."

  Durell waited.

  "He doesn't want to see me," Amanda went on. "He simply wants me to bring him something from Aerospace Electronics. Certain files and papers. He wrote that he wanted and needed them for his work. He asked me not to tell anyone—and now I've told you."

  "What sort of files?" Durell asked.

  "I really don't know. I'm not an electronic engineer, am I? Steve took care of it and brought them over from New York."

  "You have them now?"

  She hesitated. "Yes. Can I trust you, Sam?"

  He smiled. "No. I have a job to do, remember."

  "I understand, but—"

  "Tell me about this Stephenson."

  "Gary Stephenson has helped me so much. He was Hannibal's right-hand man. Always there when needed. He really kept me afloat, after Hannibal died."

  "Where are the files?"

  "In my luggage."

  "Where are they to be delivered?"

  "I don't know that yet. Richard's letter simply directed me to come here, to this hotel in Fez, and wait for instructions."

  "You've heard nothing since?"

  "I've only just arrived, and the first thing I did was to phone the number that General McFee gave me, in order to reach you."

  She was an innocent, he thought, opening a door in the dark world he knew so well, inhabited by dangers, monsters, by inhuman creatures masquerading as ordinary people. The innocent died too easily in Durell's world. She didn't understand what she was doing.

  "May I borrow the files?" he asked quietly.

  "I'm not sure I should let you have them."

  "I'll return them in an hour, Amanda."

  "Steve said they were confidential corporate papers. Some new satellite designs aimed to make television transmissions of high-resolution photographic quality and property." She paused, and smiled genuinely this time. "I sound as if I know what I'm talkmg about, don't I? But I really don't. You can have them, Sam."

  She went into the bedroom of the suite. Durell watched her walk, and then went to the bar and poured another bourbon. He studied the carved fretwork in cabalistic Moorish designs over each window. The couches and chairs were covered with pink brocade, the window curtains were a dark silk, and there was a raised platform covered with massed cushions at one end of the room. He wondered if this room had once been part of the Grand Vizier's harem.

  Amanda had her glasses off when she returned with a small flat manila envelope. Durell nodded, took it, and fanned out the contents on an enormous, carved sandalwood table of hexagonal design. The scent of the wood teased his nostrils, mingling with Amanda's delicate and undoubtedly expensive perfume. The papers were intricate blueprints and diagrammatic sketches with small notes on electronic detail as cabalistic as the Moorish designs over the windows.

  On two of the sheets were captions: GR107/SUPPRESSOR. CONFIDENTIAL DEVELOPMENT PLAN DE/524/Icarus IV to VEGA.

  The third sheet was marked with a precise engineer's tvpographical script. TRIGGER METHOD GR/7 VEGA VII NASA FOLIO 56 089 21 CONFIDENTIAL X AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY X SEE ATTACHED DIAGRAMMATIC SCHEME.

  There was nothing more. All three papers were doubly initialed RC and GS.

  He touched the first initial and looked up at Amanda. "Richard Coppitt?"

  "Yes. And Gary Stephenson."

  "These are government papers, you understand."

  "I don't know anything about them."

  "But they came from HCI files?"

  "That's what was requested by Richard, and this is what Steve sent."

  He put them in the brown envelope and put the envelope in his pocket. "You'll have them back in an hour, Amanda."

  "Sam, are they important? If these are government papers—were they stolen? Were they in the office files iUegaUy?"

  "I honestly don't know."

  "I don't want any harm to come to Richard," she said. 'I must have your promise on that."

  "I'll do my best," he told her.

  Without her glasses, her green eyes looked sad and frightened.

  7

  Fez was asleep at one o'clock in the morning. Durell rubbed his stiff shoulder where the bullet had scratched the skin, and remembered he ought to have a doctor look at it and bandage it properly. It would have to wait. He drove from the viewpoint of the Palais Jamai past the Medersa Attarine and the spectacular vastness of the Karaouine Mosque. All the muezzins and the faithful seemed to be asleep, too. He took a devious route in his rented Ford through a maze of dark, faintly lighted streets, deliberately heading toward the Bab Djedid, then turning back before he reached the city walls to work his way toward the Batha Palace near the Grand Taala, Fez' busiest street. The lights were brighter here, mostly from the French restaurants. Eventually, he came back to the small marketplace and the refurbished fondouk that Olliver had made his home and K Section's Central.

  Near his destination he found a slot for the Ford and parked it in a dark alley so closely walled that the metal fenders whispered gratingly against the stone as he entered. He squeezed out and walked back. The smell of coffee drifted through the gloom, quickly blanketed by the acrid odor of donkey dung. A dim lamp burned at the corner of the cobbled lane. Water tinkled in a community fountain encased in mosaic like a lover's embrace. There were other odors in the air that he preferred not to define.

  He tried three keys in
the lock of the brass-studded, green-painted back door to Olliver's establishment before one fit, and slid the heavy bolt aside. The hinges were well oiled, and he stepped in without a sound.

  The interior air smelled of overheated brass and a sleeping body. He stood still, listening to a man breathe heavily, and then used a pencil flash to identify a servant snoring on his back. Durell stepped over him and went down a short corridor with closed doors on either side, and drifted up a flight of steep stone stairs that led to a small balcony overlooking the inner courtyard, where he had eaten so lavishly with Olliver. Everything was silent, asleep. The house had four levels, behind the unpretentious coppersmith's shop that opened on the lane. From the balcony, he was able to step through into a large room with tall, narrow slits of windows. Two women were asleep in a wide, low bed with heavily carved headboards. One stirred restlessly, and he snapped off the pencil flash and went on, climbing another flight of stone stairs to the top floor.

  Olliver's equipment would be up here. He had to try several more keys before the locked door opened and then he applied careful pressure with his fingertips.

  Light smashed into his eyes liie a left jab from a heavyweight.

  "Come in, Cajun, come in." Olliver's voice was thin and angry. "What in hell do you think you're doing? You buzzed my alarm when you opened the street door. Do you imagine I'm an amateur?"

  The first thing he noticed was that Olliver's cast was removed from his leg, and replaced by a simple bandage.

  Instead of the crutches, he sat with his left fist closed around a knobby cane. In the right hand was a heavy Walther's pointed approximately two millimeters above the bridge of Durell's nose.

  "Put the gun away, Ollie."

  "I wanted to be sure it was you."

  "Your leg much better?"

  "The local medic took the cast off after you left earlier."

  "Very good. Congratulations."

  "It's a relief. The damned thing itched like mad."

  Crouched at the foot of Olliver's big chair was the little Arab girl, totally naked, watching Durell from round dark eyes that looked blank and dazed. There was a bruise on her narrow little haunch. Olliver made a sign with the gun and the girl got up and retreated, facing Durell, one hand ineffectually trying to cover her small breasts.