Assignment Madeleine (18 page)

 
the extremists? Why not
the French? Or el-Abri?"

“Baroumi was el-Abri’s home. It was his
douar
,” Durell said. “I was here
before, a long time ago. Years ago. His parents lived here, and el-Abri took me
to visit them.”

He turned to Chet. “Can you hold things quiet here for half
an hour?”

“Are you going in alone?” Chet asked.

“I’ll take Madeleine with me,” Durell said.

“I don't want to see what’s down there,” the girl said quickly.

“Maybe you’d better. Just to see what Charley’s friends can
do.”

Her face was pale. Then she shrugged. Durell turned to where
L’Heureux had settled down, sitting on the rocky ground. The big blond man
looked disinterested.

“Which well has the money in it?” Durell asked.

“I’d have to show you, chum,” L’Heureux said. “And why
should I?”

”I’ll convince you later,” Durell said.

He started off with Madeleine down the scrubby slope toward
the village. Long shadows reached ahead of them, and the sky to the west was
suddenly aflame with brilliant color from a distant sandstorm. To the
east, the first stars shone in the purpling sky.

They crossed the barley field and passed several burned-out
mechtas
. In
front of one hut was a man, sprawled in death. A dead woman and a child lay to
one side of the road. A grenade had caught them. Durell said nothing. Madeleine
turned her head and looked the other way.

Nobody challenged them except a bony dog that came whining
up and ay down on its belly and looked at them with yellow eyes. The silence of
death hung over the village of Baroumi. The shadows thickened into solid dusk
as they reached the market place Durell had studied with his field
glasses. No one was here. There were several more Arab bodies, men and women
killed indiscriminately in bloodlust. There seemed to be no vehicles other than
the one Ford truck he had spotted from the hillside. The village itself was
small, with a population of not more than two hundred people, and of the two
hundred, not one remained in the vicinity. Those who were lucky enough to
escape the massacre had taken to the hills for good, Durell thought.

“Your friends are thoroughly efficient,” he said quietly.

Madeleine’s voice was small. She had tied back her long red
hair with a white ribbon. There was dust on her arms. The open collar of her
blouse showed smooth, tawny skin down between her breasts. Her reply was almost
inaudible. “They are not my friends, Durell.”

“Yours or Charley’s—it’s all the same. Do you know their
names?”

“It is not the same. Not anymore."

“Do you know who they are?" he asked again. “Those men
in Paris and Algiers, and those in the councils of the rebels—they are all
alike. They want this to go on.”

“I don’t know who they are. But they are not my friends.”

“Do you still expect me to believe in your change of heart?”

“I don't expect you to believe anything,” she said. “You are
a hard man. I have been watching you all day. I don’t think I like you, Durell.
You frighten me a little. You think of only one thing. Nothing else is
important but your job.”

“In which well did Charley hide the money?”

“I don’t know that.”

“This is not the time to hold back on me, Madeleine.”

“I told you, I don’t know.”

The dog with the yellow eyes had followed them from the
road. and now it was joined by three or four more—ghostly, skeletal figures
that whined and padded in their tracks through the thickening darkness. Durell
turned decisively away from the market place when he saw that the communal well
here had been destroyed by a grenade that had caved in its walls. He went down
a small alley, There was a house at the end of the alley, surrounded by a high
wall, with a wooden gate in the wall. The gate had been blown away and the wall
was scarred by bullets. Durell led the redheaded girl through.

Nothing ever changes much in the desert, he thought. The
passage of time had left few marks that hadn’t been erased or smoothed by the
shifting winds until it all looked the same again. How long had it been since
el-Abri had taken him here? More years than he cared to remember. This quiet
house, this date palm leaning over the roof, were all well remembered. It might
have been yesterday. He had hidden here with el-Abri for over a week, because
the Vichy C.I. people had gotten wind of their radio transmissions with the
Algerian
maquis
before the North African landings. He
had eaten, slept, fought, and laughed with the Kabyle people here. He remembered
el-Abri’s father, a tall man whose memories went back to the savage wars
against the Foreign Legion. He was an old man even then, like a dark oak in
dignity and strength. El-Abri’s mother had hidden behind the ways of ancient
tradition, and he had rarely gotten more than a glimpse of her. She had existed
as a soft, sliding footstep, a suspected smile behind a black veil.

Nothing had changed. Yet everything was different.

“What place is this?” Madeleine whispered.

“El-Abri was born here,” Durell said.

“You know it well?”

“Yes.”

“But no one is here now.”

He didn’t reply. He walked around the house to the walled
garden in the back. He found the bodies there.

The old man had been tortured. The old woman had been
stripped and defiled. Probably the mother had been killed first, in
an attempt to make the old man talk to the rebels about where el-Abri could be
found. The extremists considered el-Abri a traitor. Durell was sure that
neither one had yielded anything about their son.

The body of the old man hung by his feet from the limbs of a
gnarled olive tree that had been ancient when Durell was here before. The thickening
shadows made the scene grotesque, distorting it, adding a macabre touch to the
heavy silence that oozed from every corner of the walled garden.

He heard Madeleine being sick behind him. He turned back to
her

“Please. I want to go,” she whispered. “Why did you take me
here?”

“I had to know what happened," he said.

“You’re too cruel. It’s not my fault these people were killed.”

“You helped it to happen,” he said.

She was shivering. “Let’s go back. Can we go back now?”

“Not yet. We’ll look at that truck first.”

But the truck was a disappointment. It had been too much to
hope for, really. It was not far from the el-Abri house. Through the glasses it
had looked intact, but when he walked up to it he saw that a grenade had
thoroughly wrecked it, and that was why it had been abandoned here in this dead
village.

They were no better off than they had been that morning.

Worse, probably.

Chapter Sixteen

IT WAS DARK when Durell returned to the others in the hills.
A cool wind blew over the barren slopes, and the moon made distorted shadows in
every direction. The dogs kept following them, whining, and when Durell ordered
the others to come back to the village with him, the dogs padded after them.

Chet walked beside Durell. You say everybody was killed or
taken prisoner?”

“It looks that way.”

“And the truck is no good?"

“We still have only our feet to travel on."

“Can we make it back to Marbruk?”

Durell looked at the two girls. "I doubt it."

“Then I don’t see what we can do, Chet said. He scowled at
the moonlight. “If the rebels worked according to pattern, they’ve also ruined
the water supply here. There won’t be any food or water and no transportation. The
telephone lines are cut. “It's a dead end."

“Not quite,” Durell said, The French were in on the action
here. You saw the jet yourself. They know what happened here."

"Are you suggesting we stick around this charnel house until
they show up in force?” Chet lifted his carbine dubiously. “Seems like better
odds the rebels will come snooping back to collect any odds and ends before the
Army makes it.”

“That’s a possibility,” Durell admitted.

”And the rebels will collect us, too.”

"We’ll take that chance,” Durell said. “It all depends on
which side gets here first. We know that DeGrasse is short-handed in
Marbruk. He may not be able to spare a detachment from his garrison, or he may
not care to take the risk. The situation is unusual, with the extremists so bold—or
so desperate—in this area.” Durell thought about the money and decided that
could well be the cause of it all. He added, “But what happened in this village
is something the French will want to investigate and publicize. It’s too
important to disregard. I'm betting the French get here first. And the
thing for us to do is to sit it out for them.”

“I don’t think Jane can stand much more,” Chet said.

“She can take another day of it. One way or another, it won't
take longer than that.”

”I’m sorry about what happened with her and your prisoner.”

“Nothing happened,” Durell said sharply. “You ought to
realize that.”

“I know, but still—” Chet looked at L’Heureux’ big, arrogant
figure, then at his wife, walking with Madeleine. Both girls were talking
in French. Jane’s French was halting, but she knew enough to make herself
understood.

“Everything has gone wrong between us, you know,” Chet said
to Durell. “It’s a mess all around. I guess your own plans are plenty fouled
up, too. We should have been in Algiers by now. If it wasn’t for that
goumier
driver ratting
out on us, we’d be all right.”

“Just be grateful he didn’t cut us down with his tommy gun.

One of the dogs trailing after them began to growl suddenly.
The sound was low and alarming in the dusk. Chet broke his stride and halted
abruptly. His chunky body was tense and frozen as he lifted his carbine.
Nothing moved in the shadowy market place except the dogs. L’Heureux, several
steps ahead of the others, sat down on the edge of the community well in the middle
of the square. The girls halted, too. In the moonlight, the village might have
been asleep rather than murdered.

The dog growled again. Chet
snicked
back the bolt of his carbine. “Who is it?” he called loudly. “Who’s there?”

There was no answer. L’Heureux laughed thickly. “You jumpy,
Chet, boy? You don’t know what war is like, do you? Too young for the big one,
even too young for Korea, huh? You’re nervous, huh?”

“Somebody is out there," Chet insisted. Out there in the
dark.” He looked frightened in the shadowy starlight. “I heard something. And
look at the dogs.”

There came a heart-stopping beat of huge wings and an
awkward, gorged shape lifted from one of the dark doorways. The dogs barked
like maniacs. Durell looked up and saw the soaring wingspread of an African
turkey buzzard. “

“Keep your shirt on,” he said. And put down your gun"

“This place is the worst I’ve ever seen.” Chet wiped the
flat of his hand across his mouth. The cool desert breeze suddenly made
his trousers flap loudly around his ankles. “I still think it was a man
back there.”

“It might have been,” Durell said.

Chet looked sharply at him. “Did you see him?”

“No, I didn’t see anything.”

Chet blew air out from his lips. This place is like a berserk
butcher shop. We just can’t expect the girls to stay here.”

“Let’s see first if L’Heureux was telling the truth
about his cache of money.”

Chet looked angry. “This is a hell of a time to be thinking
about money.”

“It's important,” Durell said quietly.

"You’d do better to put a bullet through that bastard’s
head instead of protecting him.”

“I may have to do just that," Durell said.

L’Heureux looked indolent and at ease as Durell walked over
to him. The man had no intention of running off into the shadows of the village
now. He preferred to remain with them rather than risk being caught by returning
rebels or blood-crazed survivors, with his hands tied behind his hack. Durell
looked at the well in the market place. ”

“Is this where you hid the money?”

“Hell, no,” L’Heureux said. You don’t think I could slipped
in here in the middle of all these gooks, do you?” He shrugged awkwardly and
jerked his head. It’s a little way down that street. You going down the shaft after
it?”

“Why not?” Durell asked.

“It’s tricky. I’d hate to see you lost and the money, too.”

L’Heureux laughed thickly. “Maybe we ought to have chow
first and refill our water bottles.”

“Not from this well,” Durell said. He leaned over the stone
parapet. “It’s been stuffed with a few dead bodies.”

L’Heureux moved off ahead. The street was narrow, with small
houses hidden behind walled gardens. A gutter ran down the center of the walk.
Durell kept his gun ready. He couldn’t shake off an uneasy feeling about this dead
village. He watched the windows and doorways carefully, but nothing stirred. He
heard only the crunching of their boots and the dry rattling of palm fronds in the
trees overhead.

“Down here,” L’Heureux said.

They were only two houses from el-Abri’s. A small communal
well stood in a recess beyond a primitive Moorish arch. Several water jars lay
in broken shards on the
sun-baked
bricks around the
well.

Durell leaned over and looked down.
Starshine
led his vision down the ancient, mossy brick sides. He smelled cordite and the
acridity of a recent explosion. He could not see the water. He heard a faint
trickling, but it sounded muffled, as if it were forced through debris. He
backed off and found a stone and dropped it into the well, trying to estimate
the depth before it struck bottom. The stone did not strike water. There came a
miniature echoing, like a tiny landslide down the shaft. Twenty feet. Perhaps
thirty.