Assignment Madeleine (14 page)

Charley grinned. “Hell, I guess I will. I ain’t had breakfast
yet, anyway.”

Chet came running down the narrow wadi toward them. His
khaki shirt was streaked with sweat from his walk in the desert sun. There were
deep lines of alarm and rage in his youthful face.

“Are you all right, Jane?”

“Yes,’ she whispered.

“What happened? What did he try to do to you?”

L’Heureux said, “What do you think, boy?”

A muscle jumped in Chet's throat. He made an inarticulate
sound of anger and then he jumped at the prisoner with no further warning.
Durell’s sharp command came too late. Chet’s fist made a flat sound
as it struck the prisoners jaw. L’Heureux did not move. His body was like a
rock. He laughed and his left hand shot out and stiff fingers jabbed at
Chefs throat with amazing speed. Chet fell backward, twisting, and then doubled
forward as he clawed at his neck. L’Heureux stepped toward him and his right
fist slammed at Chet; Chet went down as if under a cleaver. He rolled
over and over on the rocky floor of the ravine. Durell moved in.

“That’s enough, Charley."

“He asked for it, the boy scout.”

“He doesn’t know how to fight your way. Leave him alone.
He’s her husband.”

Jane felt paralyzed. She looked at Chet, on the ground, humiliated
and beaten so suddenly that it was difficult to think of what had happened.
L’Heureux wasn’t even breathing hard. She watched Durell pick up Chet’s carbine
and throw it aside where L’Heureux couldn’t reach it. Durell still looked
disappointed, as if what was happening was not what he had really wanted to
happen.

Jane went to Chet and knelt beside him.

“Chet?” Her voice was small and thin. “Chet, get up.”

“Get away from me,” he whispered.

“Chet, I’m sorry—”

He jerked away and stood wavering on his feet. She put her
arm around him to help. He pulled away, not looking at her. She couldn’t see
his face. He kept rubbing his throat. Without looking at Durell or L’Heureux,
Chet

walked away on uncertain feet, down the wadi to where they
had left the truck.

Durell turned to Jane. “Go on, go with him.”

“He doesn't want me,” she said helplessly.

“He will. Stay with him. He’s been hurt in more ways than
one.”

L’Heureux laughed. “The punk ought to learn to be a man, if
he wants to keep his woman in this country.”

“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.