Assignment Madeleine (19 page)

“Somebody dropped a grenade down here for good luck,” he
announced. “The well is ready to cave in at any minute.”

L’Heureux showed alarm for the first time. "Hell,
you've got to go down! There’s a fortune waiting for me down there"

Durell had been thinking about the problem. He didn’t want
to trust Chet on guard here while he lowered himself into the shaft. Nor could
he ask Chet to take the risk of going down.

“Let me go down,” L’Heureux said urgently. He strained at
the bonds that tied his hands behind his back, and his shoulder muscles writhed
under his tattered shirt. “What have you got to lose? We need the water,
anyway. How long do you think we can hold out when the sun comes up tomorrow?
You might have to take to the hills again, it the rebels come back first.
You’ll need the water.”

“You’re too anxious to get down there,” Durell said.

“Hell, I don’t care who goes down. Let Chet do it.”

“No,” Jane said suddenly. “Not Chet.” Chet looked up, surprised.
Jane went on, “I can do without the water. Really, I can.”

“But you can’t,” Durell decided. He gave Jane his carbine to
hold. “Can you use this?”

"Yes, I’ve done skeet shooting—”

“Cover the prisoner. You, too, Chet.” Durell cut L’Heureux’
bonds with a pocket knife. “Go ahead, Charley. And bring some water back up
with you.”

“Sure thing.”

L’Heureux straddled the stone coping around the well and sat
there for a moment, rubbing circulation back into his big hands. He looked at
Madeleine and grinned as she turned away. Durell took his carbine back from
Jane. The interior of the well shaft was of rough stones, and the diameter was
not too wide to prevent L’Heureux from bracing hands and shoulders against one
side and finding toe holds on the other.

He edged down into the deep hole.

It was a piece of cake, Charley thought. He hadn’t
figured on some idiot rebel dropping a grenade down the well, but even
that had worked out. Otherwise, Durell might have sent Chet down.

His hands were still numb and tingling from the long hours
of having them tied behind his back, and his shoulders ached from muscular
strain. He let himself down carefully, feeling the roughness of the stones
against his back, gripping the adjacent stones on either side with his hands
flat beside him and digging with his toes against the cracks and crevices
on the opposite wall.

He looked up and saw the circle of night sky overhead, the
shining stars, the dark oval of Durell’s head. He hoped Madeleine knew that
this was the big thing. He couldn’t see her or the Larkins. Just Durell,
watching.

“It's cold down here,” he called up.

“Make it quick. Let me know when to lower the canteen.”

“I don't see any water.”

“You can hear it, can’t you?”

His voice echoed curiously with a note of thunder reverberating
from the stone walls of the shaft. Charley lowered himself a few more feet. He
tried to remember how it had been when he left the money here. How far down was
it? He smelled the still-lingering fumes of cordite from the grenade that had
blown in the bottom of the well. The stupid bastards, he thought. If the money
had been destroyed or buried—

But it couldn’t be. He had put it, tin box and all, on a
shelf just above the water level. It ought to show up soon.

He touched bottom sooner than he expected.

There was no shelf. And no water level. Only rubble, a mass
of razor-sharp stone chips and sand trickling away from where lie braced his
foot. Charley got his weight adjusted on the pile of stone. The whole thing
might collapse under him and bury him here, and he knew there would be no help
from Durell if he was trapped like that. He began to sweat. He told himself to
take it easy, measure every move, disturb nothing until he was sure of where he
was and what he was doing. He wished he had a flashlight. But only Durell
had a torch, and he hadn’t obliged by passing it down to him.

“Hey,” he called.

“Are you ready for the canteen?” Durell asked.

“Sure. Pass it down.”

There was no water. He could hear it trickling somewhere in
a cavity under the rubble he stood upon, but it might as well have been running
into China, for all the good it did them. He didn’t intend to dig down and risk
getting trapped down here just for them. He could stand being without water
better than the rest.

But where was the money?

The shelf where he had hidden the box was gone. The whole
place was unfamiliar. When he was here before, there had been a rope and pulley
and hand grips down into the shaft. The grenade had changed all that. But the
tin box had to be here. Somewhere. Under the rubble. It couldn’t be too far
down.

He began to move the stones away carefully, sensing the
hollow under him that waited only for a shift of balance to drop him with a
couple of tons of rock and sand into the true bottom of the well. He sweated
even more, despite the clammy cold. He felt around in the darkness. His hands
had lost their numbness. But he could not find the ledge.

“L’Heureux!”

He looked up. He saw Durell’s head and the muzzle of his
carbine over the edge of the well.

“I’m all right,” he called.

"I'm passing down the canteen."

“Fine.”

He saw the steel bottle in its khaki case lowering on a length
of rope that had been used to bind him. He waited for it and when it came down
he untied it and placed it on the rocks at his feet.

He had it figured out now. The explosion of the
grenade had caved in the ledge and slid out a long slab of sandstone that was
jammed against the opposite side of the shaft. He could feel the tilt of it
plainly now. He removed some of the smaller stones and felt the water-smooth
ledge. It was only eight inches wide. He shifted carefully, to stand on it.
There came a rumbling and a grinding noise underfoot and the mass of debris carrying
his weight suddenly dropped a few inches. He stood very still. His heart
hammered crazily.

“L’Heureux!” Durell called again.

"I'm stuck."

“How bad is it?”

“Give me a few minutes.”

That would hold him, Charley thought. He moved some more
stones and suddenly his fingers felt the sharp edge of metal. A great
flood of relief swept over him. He tried to pull the box loose. It
wouldn't move. He began to curse and sweat. The sandstone slab pinned the box
to the ledge. He tried to lift it. There was no purchase, and he did not dare
exert too much pressure or the whole business would cave in. He tried again. He
got his right hand under the edge of the sandstone slab his left on the small
corner of the tin box. He lifted again. Nothing happened. Once more. The box
moved an inch or two and then again, and he felt a darkness surge over his
brain with the blood-crushing effort. From high above came the distorted echo
of Durell s voice, calling down to him. He thought he heard Madeleine, too. He
didn’t look up.

Once more.

The box came free.

One end had been partly crushed and flattened, and the
lock was sprung so the lid was twisted partially open. He felt inside. The
money was there.

And the gun.

Charley opened the box all the way and felt the wads of
currency and pushed them aside until he got a grip on the heavy Colt .45. He
turned his head then, his big shoulders hunched, and looked up at the circle of
starlit

sky above. He could see Durell leaning down, and Madeleine
and the Larkin girl, too. But they couldn’t see him. It was too dark down here
for that. He took the Colt and slid out the magazine, and by his sense of touch
he checked the heavy slugs in their copper jackets. Then he slid the magazine
back into the butt and forced the barrel hack until a shell went
snicking
into the chamber and the hammer was cocked.

He laughed silently. He tugged at the canteen dangling on
the end of the line. “Hey, Durell! There’s no water! I can’t reach it and I
ain’t going to try. Pull the can back.”

“I can hear the water running,” Durell called down.

“Yeah, but I can’t reach it. I’m coming up now.”

“Use the line, then."

“Hell, I don’t need it.”

Charley straightened and thrust the Colt into the belt of
his khaki slacks. He would need both hands to make thy climb back up.

“Did you find the money?” Durell called.

“Yeah, I got it.”

“Tie the box—did you say it was in a box?”

“Yeah, a tin box.”

“Tie it to the canteen. We’ll lift that first.”

Charley pretended to hesitate. “How do I know you won’t just
clobber me and drop me back in here, huh?”

“You know better than that. You and I have a date in Paris,”
Durell said.

Charley’s laughter filled the well shaft with
wheezing, whispering silence. “Okay, pal, I trust you. just don’t run off with
the loot, huh?”

He tied the tin box and the canteen to the line and watched
it rise in swift, swooping jerks to the top of the well and vanish into
Durell’s hands. The moment Durell’s head was withdrawn, to examine the contents
of the box, as Charley guessed might happen, Charley jumped for a hand hold on
the wall of the shaft, got one leg braced against the opposite curve, heaved
with his muscular shoulders and gained another foot, stopped for an instant to
get his hands flattened against the stones below and behind him, and then
surged up in in a twisting, rising, spinning leap that brought him within three
feet of the top of the well. His right hand shot up and outward, his
fingers caught at the coping stone above, clawed for a moment, and held.
His body thudded hard against the well wall as he dangled there for a moment by
one hand. He jerked convulsively, got his other shoulder up, his other arm up,
his left hand on the coping. A moment later he heaved once more, his shoulder
muscles cracking and straining to lift his weight, and then his head came above
the top of the well and he was out of it like a dark, giant cat.

The first shot went by his head like a thunderclap.

Jane screamed. The second burst of shots chipped stone from
the edge of the well in a harsh spray that stung one side of his face.

He didn't know what was happening. He could see the moonlit
market place clearly, after the darkness of the well. Durell was to his left.
He held the tin box in his left hand, his carbine in his right. Durell wasn’t
the one who had fired at him. Nor had Chet. Chet had stumbled and fallen
to his knees, and Chefs carbine lay in the dust in front of him.

He couldn’t understand it.

He pulled the pistol from his belt, snaked over the well coping,
and dropped flat on the ground. The third burst of automatic fire went
over his head.

Charley saw it now. He was the target. It was one of those
crazy things you couldn’t count on. One of those things not even Durell could
anticipate.

Somebody was shooting at them from the alleyway nearby. It
was where the dog had sensed something earlier and had shown it by his growls.
The man was a dimly defined shadow under the leaning walls of a yellow house.
He seemed to be on his knees. Then Charley saw the glint of moonlight on the
barrel of a tommy gun and a sudden spray of bullets went hammering and screaming
again in their direction. It was wild and crazy. It made no sense.

The man with the tommy gun began cursing in a high, thin
voice. He was yelling something in Arabic, and Charley heard his own name,
shockingly, in the middle of the incoherent stream of hatred. Durell shouted to
the man to drop his gun. The echoes of the tommy gun were enormous in the
silent, dead village. The man’s screaming incantations were the voice of a
pain-crazed lunatic shouting at the cold Sahara moon.

Charley raised himself and leveled the Colt and fired one
shot carefully at the Arab’s shadow in the alley. The screaming curses ended.
The man dropped. Durell yelled at the same time and Charley twisted, still on
his belly. He saw Chet leveling his carbine and fired again. The bullet
hit Chet in the shoulder and knocked him into the dust around the well. Chet
tried to get up and Charley fired again. He missed. It didn’t matter. He reached
with his left hand, lunging upward for two steps, and his long arm went around
Jane’s waist. She had been standing as if paralyzed for all these moments. He
dragged her body flat against his and swung her around to face as he did,
toward Durell.

“Now,” Charley gasped hoarsely.

Durell had dropped the money box. He was holding his left
hand with his right. His carbine had fallen. A thin trickle of blood came from
Durell’s clenched hand.

Durell looked at Charley’s gun and nodded curiously.

“All right, Charley.”

Charley was a prisoner no more.

"Please . . .” Jane moaned. She sounded out of her mind
with terror. “Oh, please, stop it, stop it, don't shoot any more. . . .”

“Take it easy, baby.”

“You shot Chet—”

“He wasn’t much, anyway.” Charley looked at Durell. Stand
away from your gun, huh? Mad, pick it up. Use it on him if you have to.”

Madeleine got up and nodded. Her face was pale and blank.
She moved like a sleepwalker toward Durell and picked up the carbine. Charley
couldn’t tell what she was thinking. He didn’t quite trust her. He watched her until
she stepped back and faced Durell and covered him with the carbine.

Charley let out his breath in an explosive laugh. “You got
creased, Durell? The gook nicked you?”

In the hand,” Durell said quietly. ‘Where did you get the
pistol?”

“It was with the money. I had a hunch I might need it the
day I picked it up. No telling who I’d be with.”

“I thought it was something like that, Durell said.

“I was ready for you, Charley. You ought to know I was ready
to kill you as you came out of the well.

Charley laughed again. “But the gook threw you off. My
break, huh? The way the ball bounces. It’s happened with me before like that.”
Charley felt breathless. There was a great pressure of exultation squeezing in
his chest. He enjoyed holding Jane’s soft body close to him. He could feel the
trembling warmth of her flesh against his thigh. He could smell the
womanliness of her. He knew he was hurting her, crushing her in the grip of his
big arm. He didn’t care. He squeezed her harder.