Assignment Madeleine Read online

  “You don’t have to hold me,” Madeleine said. “I’m all right. And I won’t run away.”

  Durell let her go and they walked toward the jeep. It stopped in front of them. A man in the uniform of the regular French Army jumped out and waved his driver to stay behind the wheel.

  “Monsieur Durell? Mademoiselle Sardelle? Captain DeGrasse.

  Durell shook hands with the Frenchman. DeGrasse was over forty, blond and hard and slender, wearing sweat-stained khaki with a string of grenades slung from one shoulder, a carbine from another. On his shirt were red captain’s insignia, and among the ribbons on his breast was the black and green of the Cross of the Liberation with a number of palms, the Legion of Honor, and several from the Indo-Chinese campaign that had ended so tragically at Dien-bien-phu. There was a thin streak of blood across his jaw. He smiled ruefully. His voice was calm, deep, assured.

  “My apologies. You landed in the middle of a boiling kettle, eh? The rebels surprised us again. Our plans will have to be changed, I am afraid. However, your prisoner is quite safe. How you will get him out of here is a matter we must consider with care tomorrow.”

  “By tomorrow I want to be back in France,” Durell said.

  DeGrasse shook his head. “Quite impossible, monsieur. But we can discuss the situation at ease at Felix’ hotel. I am sure you will wish to rest the remainder of the night. Mademoiselle, will you please sit up front with the driver?”

  Madeleine said, “How is L'Heureux, captain? Is he all right?”

  “You mean is he well, in good health? Yes, the beast lives. I wish I had shot him out of hand two days ago. I have a feeling that tonight’s disturbance was an effort on the part of the rebels to take our prize from us.” DeGrasse took Madeleine’s arm and helped her into the jeep. “We will go to the hotel first It is quite safe now. The rebels will not attack again tonight. You can see how the situation is here, very uncertain, quite dangerous for visitors.” DeGrasse smiled briefly. He had a boyish face enhanced by his rakish black beret and bright tawny eyes. “We managed to kill a round dozen of the devils tonight, at any rate.”

  “I would like to see L’Heureux as soon as possible,” Durell said. “And I would like to talk to you in private about Orrin Boston, if I may.”

  “Of course. My orders are to give you every assistance.

  Both you and your charming aide.” DeGrasse told the bearded driver to go to the Marbruk Hotel and sank back on the hard seat of the jeep. He slung his carbine around to hold it on his knees. “You will wish to refresh yourselves first.”

  “Just what is your situation, captain?” Durell asked.

  “Are we cut off from the coast here?”

  “In most ways. Communication is impossible for the moment. I had planned to send a military convoy with you, but I will not be able to spare the men and equipment, after tonight. Not until things settle down, at any rate."

  “When do you expect that to be?”

  “Two or three days, monsieur.”

  “Perhaps you can spare a single truck or car.”

  “I would not attempt the trip alone, m’sieu.”

  “I know the country,” Durell said. “I’ve been here before.”

  “Ah, I see. During the war?”

  “Yes.”

  “I shall give your suggestion serious consideration,” DeGrasse said.

  It was only a ten-minute drive from the airfield to the hotel. The streets were narrow, sometimes barely passable for the jeep, and DeGrasse kept his carbine ready, his eyes on the dark, leani.ng walls of the houses that loomed over them. No one moved on the streets except an occasional hurrying figure, sometimes in burnoose and robe, sometimes in European clothing. At frequent intervals they passed patrols of territorials or regular armed troopers on guard.

  The bearded French jeep driver escorted Madeleine into the lobby, carrying the small piece of luggage she had salvaged from the plane. Durell halted DeGrasse on the silent terrace under the lights.

  “Could you spare a man or two for the next hour?”

  he asked quietly. “I would like to have the girl guarded.”

  DeGrasse looked mildly surprised. “But she is your associate, monsieur.”

  “Not exactly,” Durell said. “She is suspect. I’ll explain later. But it is important that she be prevented from making any local contacts without my presence.”

  “You will return here for the night, however?”

  “I’d like to see Orrin Boston’s room first—the place Where he lived and look it over. Then I’ll want to talk to L’Heureux.”

  DeGrasse’s face clouded. “I will be glad to get rid of that one. I was fond of Orrin Boston, you know. He knew this country and the people, and he was of great assistance to me in the matter of maintaining contact with the local population. His death was a tragedy that never should have happened.”

  “What do you know about it?”

  DeGrasse shrugged. His youthful face looked tired in the harsh glare of light from the open doors of the hotel. “L’Heureux shot him twice, once in the lung and once more in the stomach. Monsieur Boston was dead when we found him.”

  “And where was that?”

  “In the south quarter of the town. It is my belief that Boston was negotiating with dissident elements among the rebels. He would not tell me what the subject of his negotiations was, but for the last week he was very cheerful and optimistic. He seemed to expect great things from his work as mediator.”

  “Did he mention any particular sums of money being involved?”

  DeGrasse looked puzzled. “No, monsieur.”

  “Did he tell you any of his thoughts about L’Heureux?”

  DeGrasse rubbed his smooth jaw. “I distrusted L’Heureux, you know. This American had an undesirable reputation, you understand. But I had to be tactful. Boston said he knew all about the man and was on his guard and chose to employ him in his negotiations with the rebels. But evidently Boston was not careful enough, eh?”

  “Why are you so sure L’Heureux killed him?”

  “He was caught on the spot by the locals. It was in Orrin Boston's flat, behind a Moslem café run by a Kabyle who was friendly with Boston. When they heard the shots they rushed in and found Boston dying and L’Heureux with the gun in his hand. L’Heureux tried to maintain it was a terrorist murder, but no one else was on the scene. He is guilty, monsieur. And I do not envy your job of taking him back to the frustrating processes of justice.” DeGrasse slapped his carbine. “Orrin Boston was a man highly respected by everyone here. Even loved, one might say. My own brand of justice for his murder would be cleaner and quicker.”

  “My orders are to bring L’Heureux back unharmed,” Durell said.

  “And mine are to assist you in every possible way.”

  “Then shall want a truck and a driver by tomorrow morning.”

  “The nearest contact with other Army units who could give you reliable escort to Algiers is well over a hundred kilometers to the north. I could not spare an escort large enough to insure your safety. Not for several days, at any rate."

  “No escort at all would be better than one that is too small, yet attracts attention. Do you understand?”

  “We shall discuss it at your convenience.”

  “Now, if I may see Orrin Boston’s living quarters, Durell suggested quietly.

  The jeep driver, who said his name was Jean Letou, was a sweaty man in a stained uniform, steel-helmeted, with tired, bloodshot eyes that peered with suspicion at every shadow on the narrow, twisting streets they followed. Durell carried a snub-nosed .38, but he kept it in his pocket. He had to remember this was not his war.

  The town was quiet. Durell looked at his watch and saw it was almost midnight. Here and there a hurrying figure showed briefly in the shadows, and the driver tensed physically as they passed by, but nothing happened. They were moving away from the sector of town where the raid had occurred. Jean turned down a narrow street where the stone houses seemed to lean over them, their b
alconies almost touching overhead to form a tunnel. Lights shone ahead in a small square. Garish, naked bulbs gleamed over a long, high wall where someone had daubed in red paint, A bas les francaises! The driver made a spitting sound in his beard as they lurched by and then halted the jeep in front of the dim entrance to a cafe.

  “I had better go in with you, monsieur. It is difficult to guess how they will regard a stranger. They are always nervous after the rebel attack. Afraid of their brothers and afraid of the settlers’ territorial squads who make reprisals.”

  Durell surveyed the shadowy native building and the surrounding alleys. “Did Boston live here?”

  “He lived everywhere, they say, but this was his headquarters.”

  “Were these people his friends?”

  “Everyone was his friend, monsieur.”

  Durell looked at him. “Except for one.”

  “Merde.” The driver spit again, wiped his beard with a thick hand, and took his carbine and stood on the rough sidewalk. “We have that one locked up at the command post. It is a disappointment he will not be shot, I myself volunteered for the firing squad.”

  “Let’s go in,” Durell said.

  The thin wail of a flute and the rhythmic beat of a goatskin drum came from inside the café. There were several wooden tables inside and half-a-dozen Moslems in European dress drinking tea. The music, Durell saw, came from a radio. A dark—faced girl in a gray skirt and pink blouse came toward them smiling, and then she stopped smiling.

  “Jean, everything is quiet here,” she said quickly to the jeep driver. “There has been no trouble at all.”

  “It is this man,” Jean said, waving to Durell. “He has come for Monsieur Boston’s belongings.”

  Someone turned off the radio and the music stopped. There was silence in the small, smoky room. Two of the Arabs got up and walked out. The girl looked at Durell with sullen, hostile eyes. “There is nothing to take. He owned very little, wanted very little.”

  “I’d like to look around, anyway,” Durell said.

  “As you wish, m’sieu. Follow me.”

  She led the way through an arched doorway in the back of the room and out through a heavy wooden gate into a back garden. The change in atmosphere was startling, after the squalid café. A small fountain tinkled with gentle splashings. A flight of stone steps scaled the outside wall ahead to a doorway on a balcony above.

  The bearded French driver said, “You go first, Zorah.”

  The Arab girl smiled scornfully. “The rebels are not here. There is no trap. There is no need to be afraid.”

  “Nevertheless, you go first.”

  She shrugged and climbed the outside steps to the door and opened it. When she had put on a light, Durell followed the soldier in and closed the door behind him.

  There was a heavy baroque desk that looked incongruous amid the delicately wrought Arab pieces. Durell went to it and opened several of the drawers. The papers inside had been pawed around hurriedly. He looked in a scented wardrobe closet. The fragments of a smashed radio tube glittered in brittle silver slivers on the floor inside. That was all.

  “Captain DeGrasse went through everything, m’sieu,”

  Zorah offered. She stood near the doorway, her arms folded across her breasts, one hip askew. “There was nothing of importance here, I heard him say.”

  Durell nodded and went to the window and looked out at the courtyard they had entered. Darkness ruled down there. He couldn’t see anything. He returned to the wardrobe and looked at Orrin Boston’s European clothing and the fine Arab kachabia he must have worn often. Durell’s eyes were dark and brooding. Boston had loved this Moslem world, and he had been doing a good job for K Section here.

  He turned to the girl. “You were here the night he was killed?”

  “Not here. Downstairs, entertaining.”

  “Do you work in the café regularly?”

  “Yes. I also cooked for Monsieur Boston and did his laundry.”

  “You were fond of him?”

  The girl’s eyes were large and dark. “I loved him, m’sieu."

  Durell was relentless. “How much did you love him?”

  “We were—I did everything I could for him. All that he permitted and accepted. I knew about his wife and family. I think he loved them and loved me, too. He was a deeply troubled man in that respect, living in two worlds, yet drifting as one lost on the sea.”

  “Who killed him?”

  “It was Charles L’Heureux,” she said flatly.

  “Did you see it happen?”

  “I was one of the first to run up here when we heard the shot in the café. They had been quarreling, and finally they began to fight. We heard the sounds of the struggle and then the shot. It was over very quickly, m’sieu.”

  “And L’Heureux was in this room when you came in?"

  “Yes. With the gun in his hand.”

  “Did he admit killing Orrin Boston?”

  “He is a devil, that one. A laughing devil. At first he tried to say it was a terrorist. But we know no one was here from the rebels. I—I tried to kill him.” She lifted her skirt and showed a long, thin poniard strapped to her firm thigh. “With this, m’sieu. But he is strong, that one. He laughed and took it away from me. Then the soldiers arrived and they took him away. And the body.” She made a dim swallowing sound and her face twisted

  with grief. “Orrin is buried in the military cemetery at the command post.”

  Durell looked around the ornate Moorish room again. He wondered who had taken Orrie’s radio. He tried to feel the presence of the man who had lived here, to capture the sight and sound and look of him, but it was difficult to place him in this alien environment.

  Nobody had mentioned the huge sum of American currency that had vanished. He decided not to say anything about it, either. He looked at the French jeep driver. “Let’s go, Jean."

  The bearded soldier turned his bulky form toward the door and waved his carbine at the Arab girl. “Forward, petite.”

  “Don’t push me,” she said. “I live here.”

  “This place is restricted,” the soldier said. “Co first.”

  The girl looked resentful as she went out. The courtyard below was filled with shadows that moved in the wind and the moonlight. Durell closed the door and descended the stone stairway outside. The girl slipped ahead through the gateway to the garden behind the café, and then the jeep driver followed.

  Durell did not see it happen. He came through the gateway in time to hear the thud of the thrown knife as it landed in the soldier’s back. He heard the grunt forced from the bearded man's open mouth, then the crash as the soldier fell. Durell dropped to one knee and crouched in the shadows against the high, vine-grown wall. The Arab girl had turned at the sound. She was beyond the fountain, on the other side of the garden, near the back door to the café. She screamed.

  Durell’s gun was in his hand. He felt hard stones under his knee, he saw the shadows moving intangibly against the walls of the dark, silent houses around them. The man with the knife could be anywhere. He looked briefly at Jean. The soldier was dead. The knife had been thrown with deadly aim. Its hilt shone with polished wood and that part of the blade extruding from the Frenchman’s back glistened in the moonlight.

  The Arab girl screamed again. Durell felt the fury of frustration. The ambusher was too well concealed. He wasn’t moving to betray his position. There was nothing to shoot at.

  Then there came a shout from the house to his left, and a muffled shot. A whistle blew, high and shrill, from the street beyond the café entrance. Another shot cracked. Durell stepped over the dead man and ran through the café to the street. The Arabs in the café sat frozen at their tables. Their dark faces were like stone.

  In the street, a French patrol was fanning out toward the nearest corner. A man stood on one of the high roofs there, holding a rifle. One of the troopers took aim and fired carefully. The man was a dark shadow, rigid for a moment against the moonlit sky. Then h
e fell, cartwheeling to the street three floors below. His body made an ugly breaking sound as he hit. The French soldier who had fired the shot got up and walked toward the body and kicked it futilely.

  “He was a sniper the rebels left behind,” a young lieutenant said breathlessly. “Was anyone hurt?”

  “One of your comrades lies behind the café with a knife in his back,” Durell said.

  “Your driver?”

  “Yes.”

  “These murderers grow more fanatic every day. I knew Jean well.” The lieutenant sent two men hurrying through the cafe. Durell looked for the Arab girl, but he didn’t see her. He pocketed his gun. The young lieutenant was staring at him. The Frenchman said, “You will need another man to escort you back to the hotel.”

  “I’m not going back to the hotel just yet,” Durell said.

  The command post in the farmhouse was only a short drive from town. Durell took the jeep there himself. The sentries waved him past the barbed wire into the compound, which was floodlighted by powerful spots placed on steel posts. Durell noted the weary anger and tension on the faces of the troops.

  DeGrasse was in his office. He still wore his black beret, but he had unslung the set of grenades dangling from his shoulders. He looked exhausted. He listened to what Durell told him about the murder and nodded. “Another one, then. It is often this way. For no reason, a good man dies. I shall have to write to his wife.”

  “And the assassin?”

  “He was also a man. And dead, too. One wonders monsieur, where the balance lies.”