Assignment Madeleine (22 page)

She heard a curious cry from Chet down below in the ravine.

She screamed.

Charley rolled and stood in a crouch beside her, waiting.
Chet came struggling up the slope to the cave. His face was dark with anguish.

“Come on, boy scout,” Charley whispered.

It was quick and efficient. Chet’s wild attack was doomed by
his wound, his weakness, his blind rage. It was easy for Charley. Charley let
him swing and ducked and laughed, and then he stabbed a hard left into Chet’s belly
and followed that with a knee lift that smashed into Chefs face and slammed him
backward. Chet went down. He rolled over twice, down the slope. His arms and
legs seemed boneless, flapping with the roll of his body. His head struck
a stone with a flat sound and he lay still, like a discarded pile of ragged
clothes, dim and motionless in the starlight.

Charley turned back to Jane.

She had fainted.

He didn’t care.

Durell felt rage move in him and break all the cool and calculating
moves his training required. It didn’t matter now. Jane’s move hadn’t worked—it
had been disastrous. He knew that this was the time to be calm, to let what was
happening up there go on. He couldn’t let it happen. He couldn’t stay down here
and let Charley do what he was doing.

“Get me loose,” he whispered harshly.

Madeleine trembled as she untied the knots binding his
wrists. “The animal,” she whispered. “I don’t want to look at him up there with
her. Like an animal in the field. But he knows I will watch. It is part
of the amusement and pleasure for him.”

“Hurry it up,” Durell said.

“I think he killed Chet.”

“Killing comes easy for Charley. Did you see where he put
the guns?”

“Just inside the cave entrance.”

“But he’s got the pistol with him, right?”

“And the grenade.”

Durell’s hands came free, He moved his arms a little. He
looked up at the cave. The two figures up there were locked together as
one. He stood up. He kept his hands behind his back, as if they were still
tied. There are so many ways to kill a man, Durell thought. Simple, easy ways.
You don’t need a knife or a gun. A pebble would do. A rolled-up newspaper.
Orrie Boston had told him that one. A stiffened finger, stabbing and
rupturing. He could do it. He wanted to do it.

Madeleine put her hand on his arm as he moved to take the
first step up there. “No, wait. He will only kill you, too.”

“I can get up there fast,” Durell said.

“But you will not try to kill him, will you?”

“I have to bring him in alive and talking.”

“But he has no such inhibitions.” Madeleine was angry and
impatient. “Oh, don’t you see? We are both angry. And shocked. And that poor
girl up there—with her husband dead—”

“We don’t know Chet is dead.”

“And we don’t dare go to see if he needs help, do we?

“I’m going,” Durell said.

She held him back again. “Wait.” She breathed quickly.

She faced away from the cave entrance. “He will kill you. I
know him. He is waiting for you now. After the husband, then you. It is his way
of pleasure. It is what he planned, you see. Now he is waiting for you.”

“He’s busy,” Durell said cruelly.

“Not so busy that he doesn’t know we are here talking and
wondering. He does this deliberately, don’t you see?”

Durell looked down at her. She looked small and slight, no
longer the elegant
Parisienne
model. He almost liked her.
But she was right. He couldn’t kill L’Heureux.

“And your hand?” Madeleine said. "How is your wounded
hand?”

He had forgotten about it. Now that she had cut the bonds on
his wrists, the circulation was restored. He looked down at his fingers.
There was blood on them. There was a long scar on the back of his left hand,
and it was bleeding again, and when he flexed his fingers and made
a fist, he felt the pain go all the way up his arm into his shoulder.

“Let me go up,” Madeleine said urgently. “He is expecting
you, so I will go. I can get one of his guns. He won’t stop me, you see. That
type will be amused. I have heard stories about his habits with girls. More
than one girl. The thought will come to his head when I walk up there. He will
think I want—he will be diverted, you understand.”

“No, I can’t let you go first.”

“It will distract him. Are you so angry you are blind? I
thought you knew your business better than this. You think you shouldn’t send
me, a woman, first? We will all die if we do not win. I am going. You
can’t stop me.”

“Madeleine—”

She turned from his grip and walked quickly up the slope,
almost running, before he could stop her. The wind blew her hair across her
cheek. Durell watched her walk through a pattern of silver moonlight and dark
shadow. He cursed, started after her, checked himself. If he followed now,
while Charley watched, they would both be killed.

A few pebbles rolled with surprising noise from under Madeleine’s
shoes. She came to the long shapeless mass of Chet Larkin’s body. She heard him
breathing, though he didn’t move when she paused beside him. But he was still
alive. Maybe he would die soon, in a few minutes. There wasn’t time to look at
him to see if she could help.

She walked on toward the cave.

Charley was sitting up. Jane lay on her stomach with her
face in her arms. Charley looked at her and smiled strangely.

“Mad? Come to see the fun?”

“Charley, you’re too cruel,” she said.

“Come on up, Mad.”

“I’m coming, Charley. What’s the matter with Jane?”

“She’s a sensitive type. She passed out, right away.”

Charley’s voice was thick with something that went beyond
anger. He looked irritated, sitting with his legs crossed tailor-fashion,
beside the unconscious girl. The cave was a wide, dark crevice behind him. She
wanted to turn her head to see if Durell was following, but she didn’t dare
move Charley’s attention that way. Had he started yet? She couldn’t be sure.
She walked all the way to where Charley sat. His close-cropped, yellow hair looked
white in the starlight. His face looked shapeless and slack, as if the bones
had dissolved in acid cruelty. She had never seen him like that before. She
tasted hatred and enjoyed it.

His voice stopped her as it he had slapped her.

“You untied Durell, didn’t you, Mad?”

“What?”

“You cut him loose. You’re on his side now, right?”

“Charley, listen to me—”

“And here he comes,” Charley said.

He stood up all in one movement, with swift, fluid grace.
Madeleine tried to stop him when he took the Colt from his belt. She thought he
was going to fire at Durell. She could hear Durell’s steps running behind
her, crunching on the rough wadi floor. Then she saw Charley turn his
head as if his neck was stiff and she saw he was pointing the gun at her. He
was smiling queerly. She heard the crash. She felt the bullet hit her with
incredible, tearing strength.

Then she was on the ground, conscious of being on her side,
with a great numbness inside her body. There was no pain. She looked up and saw
Charley standing over her. He still smiled. It was the same look he’d had on
his face the first time he had taken her. He pointed the gun at her
again, and she saw everything very clearly, all the mistakes she had made, all
the little cruelties and vicious lies she had helped him with, and she knew
that this had been the biggest mistake of all. She saw his knuckles move on the
trigger of the gun and just before the gun fired again, she knew that he
had killed her.

And then she knew nothing any more.

Chapter Nineteen

DURELL kept running at the second shot. His anger pushed him
forward, one step after another. He didn’t care about his orders now. He wanted
to kill L’Heureux. If Charley let him get five steps nearer, he could do
it.

“Hold it,” Charley said thickly. The gun swung toward him.

Durell stopped. “Is she dead?”

“She’s dead.”

“She was your girl.”

“You can have her now,” Charley said.

Madeleine looked like a child’s doll tossed idly aside

and discarded. Her eyes were wide and staring. The

caught the starlight with an illusion of life. Durell
swallowed. His anger refused to subside. He couldn’t control it. His life
depended on this control, but he couldn’t find it. He couldn’t do it.

He took two more steps toward the man who straddled the
earth like a behemoth atop a mound of his victims.

“You’ve done quite a bit tonight, Charley. You ought to be
proud of yourself. You’ve cleaned us out.”

“Not quite,” Charley said. “You’re still around.”

Durell could not see his face. The moon had gone down below
the upper edge of the wadi, although long slabs of its pale light still slanted
into the far corners of the ravine. Charley’s face was a dark wedge turned
toward him, a black outline against the pale luminosity of the sandstone behind
him.

Durell thought he heard sand run hissing into the wadi somewhere
to the rear. He heard a stone fall, rattling, bouncing, clinking. Charley heard
it, too. Neither man moved. They both listened. There was the wind. The stars
were silent. There was nothing more to hear.

Durell knew he couldn’t go back now. And Charley’s gun kept
him from going forward. Three steps away. He remembered how it had been at the
Maryland farm, where Orrie Boston had been an instructor. He remembered techniques
for assault, for murder. But Charley L’Heureux knew these techniques too.
Charley would be good at them. He had to be good, to win against Orrie, who had
already become suspicious of him.

“Go back and sit down, Durell,” Charley said. His voice rang
harshly in the night. “I've got the money, I've got the guns. The rebels will
be here soon.”

“When they come, you’ll kill me, too,” Durell said

flatly. “You’ll have to, because of the money."

“Maybe you’ll be reasonable.”

“I don’t seem to have anything to lose,” he said.

He made his move when Chet Larkin groaned and stirred. The
sound caught Charley’s ear as Durell drove up toward him. There was no stopping
now. Durell came in low under the big man, and he heard Charley suck in his
breath an instant before he twisted aside. The gun crashed. The report was
thunderous against the dark sandstone walls of the wadi. The sound of it blotted
out Charley’s yell as Durell hit him. Durell’s shoulder smashed just above
Charley’s knees. He felt the gun club his back with wild, massive strength. Charley
went over backward. His knee clipped Durell’s chest and then they both slid and
slipped and rolled down the dark slope to the bottom of the ravine.

Durell’s first aim was simply to hang on. He could not
let Charley get separated from him, because then Charley’s gun would come into
play again. But his grip on Charley’s wrist was only a fragile hold. He managed
to cling to it while they rolled over and over down the slope. Charley’s weight
was plunging, thrashing, punishing. They slammed into a boulder, and a grunt of
pain came from the big man, and Durell flipped his weight against the
thick wrist, smashing it against the stone. The gun fell free. Sand went
hissing out from under their straining bodies, and they slid in a small avalanche
to the very bottom of the wadi.

The gun was gone, lost in the sand.

The dim starlight failed to light the darkness here. With
the gun out of the way, Durell rolled aside and got his legs under him and
lifted himself to a crouch. There was little to see. The dark walls of the
ravine rose in smothering heights to right and left. The sand embankment down
which they had tumbled from the cave entrance was behind him. Charley stood
with his hands held away from his sides, his shoulders hunched stiffly forward.
He was a faceless dark mass, and Durell could smell the man’s sweat and hear
his thick, controlled breathing, and that was all.

“Come on,” Charley said. His whisper was ragged.

“Come on, Durell.” ”

“Give it up,” Durell said. “There’s no place to go.”

“I finished them up there. I got the money. There’s only
you. Come on, come closer.”

“We’re not alone,” Durell said.

“What?”

“They’re watching us.”

“What?”

“From the top of the cliff. There, off to the left.

There’s starlight on a rifle barrel.”

Charley’s laughter bubbled in his chest. “I wasn’t born
yesterday, Durell. That’s an amateur trick.”

“No trick,” Durell said. “Look at him up there.”

Charley’s head moved fractionally: The glint of
reflected starlight was no longer there. A cool wind blew down the narrow
length of the wadi, and sand suddenly came in a stinging eddy behind Durell’s
back, blowing toward his enemy. It went into Charley’s eyes, but Durell didn’t
move. He knew that if he closed with Charley now, he wouldn’t stop until
Charley was dead. Or until Charley killed him. His anger was too violent, born
of what had happened to Orrie Boston, the Larkins, and Madeleine. He was afraid
of what was happening to him because of his anger, but he couldn’t help it. Charley
dashed sand from his eyes and took a step backward and Durell stood where he
was. Charley sounded puzzled, speaking through the windy darkness.

“You could’ve taken me.”

“Why bother? We’re both in a bottle and the cork is tapped
in tight.”

“I don’t see anything,” Charley said.

Sand hissed around their feet. Charley backed up another
step. His shoulders touched a huge boulder and he jumped, turned his head
quickly to scan the sandstone cliffs around them, then turned back to Durell.

Durell’s anger was beginning to ebb. “They’re all around
us,” he said. “Watching us.”

“The rebels?”

“Maybe. Call out to them and see,” Durell suggested.

Charley was silent. His breathing was ragged. Only his eyes
flashed white in the dark mask of his face. Durell knew he could take him
now. The gun was gone, lost in the sand. Charley had changed. Something had put
fear into him. But it was not the fear of a weak man. It made him all the more
dangerous at the moment.