Assignment Madeleine (20 page)

“Let’s go look at the gook,” he said.

Nobody moved. Chet groaned, sprawled in the dust. Charley
kicked Chet's gun away. He sharpened his voice.

“Move, Durell. Now I'm the one who gives out orders.

Chapter Seventeen

THE ARAB in the alleyway was Talek. Durell turned him over
at Charley’s command and saw that Charley’s single shot had caught the
goumier
in the
mouth and burst open the back of his head. Charley took the tommy gun and Durell’s
.38 and the single grenade Durell had picked up on the road. He went back to
the well and dropped the .38 into it and Chet’s carbine. That left Charley with
the Colt and the tommy gun, and the grenade. Madeleine had Durell’s carbine.

Durell took a handkerchief from his pocket and wrapped it
around his wounded hand. It was just a crease, a burn across the knuckles, from
one of Talek’s wild, shay bullets. He ignored the pain. He had been nicked just
at the moment when he could have dropped Charley. He tried to fight down
the angry frustration he felt. There was nothing he could have done to make things
work out any other way. A bad break, that’s all it was. Bad enough to wreck
everything he had planned. Bad enough to get them all killed by this renegade
who laughed and waved his Colt around.

He forced his mind to reconstruct what must have happened.
He was sure now that Talek, the truck driver, was one of el-Abri’s men. He had
sabotaged the truck and deserted them in the hope of contacting el-Abri so that
the
Kablyle
chieftain could pick them up in the desert.
Probably el-Abri had planned things that way.

But the Kabyle’s plans had gone awry, too. He hadn’t anticipated
the extremists’ raid on Baroumi. The extremists were as much el-Abri’s enemies
as the French.

All right, Durell thought. So Talek took off for Baroumi. He
went to el-Abri’s house here and got caught in the rebel raid. Somehow Talek
survived, hid out until now. He looked at the dead
goumier
. Charley’s bullet wasn’t
his only wound. One arm had been shredded by a grenade and there was blood on
the man's uniform from a bullet in his stomach. Talek must have been out of his
mind with pain and weakness. But not too far gone to realize what was happening
when he saw them at the well. Talek had been shooting at Charley, no one else.
But in his condition, he had done the worst possible thing.

He looked at L’Heureux. The man still held on to Jane.

“Let me go,” Jane moaned. “Please, please . . . Chet is dying.
. . .”

“Not much of a loss, baby,” Charley said.

“Please. Let me help him.”

Charley saw Madeleine looking at him in a peculiar way. He
let Jane go. When he released her, she sagged and fell to her knees, and her
blond hair fell across her tormented face. Then she pulled herself up and ran
to where Chet still sprawled on the ground beside the well.

Durell said, “He’s been hit in the shoulder. But I don't think
any bones are broken.”

Jane scarcely heard him. She knelt beside Chet and gently
lifted his head. There was a great soaking stain of blood running down his left
side. He was breathing strangely. All at once a wild fury took her and she
lunged crazily at L’Heureux, hammering at him with her fists. L'Heureux
slapped her. His hand was hard and explosive against her cheek. She fell to the
ground in front of him and began to sob.

"I'll let you help him,” Charley said. “But you can’t work
against me, too. One or the other, take your choice."

Durell said, “What do you have in mind?”

You want to know right away if I’m going to kill you?”

Charley weighed the tommy gun in his hand and pretended to
consider it. “What do I need you for?” He looked at Madeleine. “You with me,
Mad?”

“I always have been, Charley.”

“You bet,” Charley said. “Pick up the money, Mad.”

She did as he ordered. Durell stood in a quiet attitude of
listening. After the slamming round of shots, the stillness of the night clung
to the dead village. Several dogs had barked for a minute or two in wild
hysteria, but nothing else happened. There was no one left in Baroumi to care.

Madeleine stood beside Charley in the quiet, whispering
night. The wind was cold. On the ground nearby, Jane sat with Chet’s head
resting on her lap. Her face was agonized as she appealed to Durell.

“Can’t you help me? Won’t anybody help?”

L’Heureux shrugged, “Go ahead, Durell. Just to settle your
mind, I can use all of you. Alive, I mean. So long as you hop when I tell you
to hop. Understood?” He paused. Nobody spoke. “All right, then. I want the boy scout
walking in fifteen minutes, or we leave him.”

“You wouldn’t,” Jane breathed.

“Don’t tempt me, baby. You and I got a date later on.”

“You’re a monster,” she whispered.

He grinned down at her. “The kind you like, huh,
Janey
?”

He looked enormous, his broad shoulders and round head
pushed forward as he grinned in the starlight. Durell watched and waited. It
was difficult to guess what L’Heureux planned to do. His hand throbbed
painfully as he helped
Iane
tear a bandage from her
blouse and make a crude compress for Chet’s shoulder. Durell’s brandy flask
brought the boy around somewhat. He groaned and rocked his head from side to
side.

"L’Heureux picked up the length of rope and handed it
to Madeleine. “Tie up Durell here. He gets a taste of his own medicine. See how
he likes hiking with his hands behind his back.”

“I thought we were going to stay here and wait for the
rebels.” Durell said carefully.

“Odds against it they get here first. The paratroopers
will drop in by morning. No, were getting out.”

“On foot?”

L’Heureux grinned. “You're nosy, huh? I’ll tell you anyway,
Durell. I got a jeep, a radio, and water hidden in the hills. We go up there.”

Durell gestured at the Larkins. "You don’t need them.
 
not leave them for the French? They’ll be
better off."

“I can use them both. In different ways, though. But you be
careful, Durell. You stay alive as long as I can use you, not a minute more.
The minute you pull something, you’re out, you’re meat for the dogs. The only reason
I keep you is for an insurance premium, see, against the French. And if we run
into my pals in the rebels, they’ll be happy to have you and point to you as a
foreign agent interfering with internal affairs here.” Charley rubbed the back
of his hand across his mouth. He seemed consumed by a poorly suppressed
excitement. “Of course, you know I don’t want to meet anybody. Mad and me are
getting out with the loot. To hell with making propaganda with a quarter of a
million bucks. If I make it, you can all walk home any way you like. But if you
make trouble, you're dead. Got it?”

Chet was on his feet. In the starlight, his face looked ravaged.
He leaned heavily on the two girls. Charley picked up the money box. The night
wind made his cropped yellow hair look like a silver hood closely fitting
his round head.

“Tie up Durell, Mad,” he said. “If the boy scout can’t make
it, we’ll drop him on the road.”

“I’ll make it,” Chet said thinly.

They started out again. Durell walked ahead. Madeleine had
tied the knots around his wrists with surprising strength, and his
fingers were growing numb.

But the bullet crease had stopped bleeding. L’Heureux had
gotten grim satisfaction out of Durell’s discomfort.

“You kept me like that long enough, buddy boy. Now it’s your
turn. Just follow the road into the hills. I’ll tell you where to turn off.”

The wind blew sand along the village streets, and the palm
fronds clacked dryly. A bit of newspaper blew across the shuttered shop fronts.
The moon was already setting. Durell's mind was on the Larkins. Jane was in bad
shape, and he didn’t think Chet would make it far. A .45 slug puts any man down
for a long time, even if it’s only a flesh wound. He didn’t see how Chet
could keep up with them for any distance.

He heard light footsteps behind him and Madeleine fell into
step. The village, with its smells of death and desolation, was behind them.
The road lifted into the barren foothills ahead.

“Be careful,” Durell said at once. “Your Charley won’t like
you to walk with me—unless he gave you permission.”

“He doesn’t care. He’s very sure of himself.”

“And you?”

“I don’t know what to think.”

“You sided with him when it mattered,” Durell said.

“He had the gun. You were hurt. One does not argue with a
gun, anyway. I have seen him like this before. He would shoot you down without
a thought. One obeys a man like that when he gives orders.”

“How is Chet doing?" Durell asked.

“A little stronger. He refuses help. He drives his wife from
his side. He is a stupid young man, I think. Can’t he see what Charley wants?
That Jane is blind, too. She doesn’t know the man Charley can be.”

“What happens when we get to this place where Charley
expects to find his jeep?” Durell asked.

Madeleine shrugged. “He will probably kill us.”

“If the jeep is there?”

“Especially if it is there. He won't need us then.”

“You include yourself among the victims, I notice.”

“He is tired of me. He looks only at the blond one, that
Jane. All day it has been like that with him. Can you explain what makes a man
obsessed like that?”

Durell walked on for a moment. “Madeleine, did you know
about the gun he had hidden in the well?”

“No.”

“You knew about the money, though.”

She shrugged again. “It was a dream. A wonderful illusion.”

“You don’t think he’ll take you with him, if things work out
as he hopes?”

“Not any more. He will take the Larkin girl. For part of the
way, anyway.” She kicked at a pebble on the road. “His ego is so great, he
can’t conceive of any woman turning against him. It is difficult, at
that. I saw him in a situation like this once before. Something happens to him.
Perhaps he becomes truly himself, without restraint. Like a clever madman. He
will give orders, simple ones at first, then those that are only devised
to humiliate and debase you. For the moment, he enjoys having us at his feet,
but in the end he will simply shoot us.”

“You seem quite sure he’ll kill you, too. Will you help me,
then?”

“That is why I walk with you now."

“We’ve got to get the gun away from him,” Durell said.

“You are a man of directness. First things first, eh?”

“Can you do it?” Durell asked.

“You mean, can I get near enough to him tonight to steal the
weapons? No. He will not have me. He will take Jane, instead.”

“But if you tried—”

“He will reject me,” she said flatly.

“Then if you can tell Jane what must be done—”

“I already have. She understands. She has agreed. She will
try to get Charley’s weapons and if she succeeds, she will kill him.”

“No,” Durell said quickly. “He’s my prisoner, still. He must
be brought back to Paris to talk about this matter.”

Madeleine looked grim. “Jane will not succeed, anyway. She
is too soft, too spoiled. Charley will take her and use her and laugh at her
afterward. She will try, but she will fail.”

"Is there anything else you can do?” Durell asked.

“Then Jane has to try,” he said.

He didn't like it. He had never subscribed to the use of
women in this business, although it was an accepted commonplace in many
instances. He told himself he had got rid of any false notions of chivalry.
There was no chivalry in this war. It was mean, gut-twisting, back-knifing
struggle, with no holds barred, no rules. You did what you could and you used
whatever weapons came to hand, or you died.

The wadi entrance ahead was a narrow cleft in the rock, not
important enough to attract attention from the road, but wide enough to permit
a jeep to drive in. Charley ordered them into the starlit gloom and after a few
steps the walls of the ravine widened and then turned abruptly to the right.
Durell halted, and Charley pushed him on angrily.

“You first, buddy boy.”

“Do you expect to meet anybody here?”

Charley breathed hard. “You never know with these gooks.”

“I don’t see any jeep.”

“You don't see the cave either, do you? It was an arms cache
for the rebels a couple months ago, but they gave it up, don’t ask me why.
They're always going off half-cocked, like a bunch of bloody amateurs. So I had
the jeep cached here, along with a radio.”

Durell went around the sharp bend in the wadi. A fiat
face of limestone loomed ahead and he looked to right and left into the angular
shadows of the ravine, but he saw no other way out. The forty-foot cliffs
formed a natural cul-de-sac. To the left was a fault in the layers of stone,
where one huge slab overlapped another, the ragged edge slanting up at a sharp
angle. If you looked at it casually, you wouldn’t see the gap behind the outer fold
of rock, the triangular opening that led into the face of the cliff.

“Mad!” L'Heureux called. “Go get the jeep out.”

Madeleine vanished quickly into the dark slot between the
stones. Durell looked at the Larkins. Jane had eased Chet to a sitting position
against a boulder, and Durell, looking at the wounded man, decided that Chet Larkin
was tougher than he looked.

Madeleine came out of the cave almost at once.

“Charley, there’s no jeep in there.”

“What?”

“The cave is empty.”

“Mad, don't joke with me—”

"I'm not, Charley, it isn’t there!” She sounded
desperate.

L’Heureux grabbed the carbine from her hands. He now had all
the weapons in the group, Durell noted. The Colt .45 was jammed in his belt,
the first carbine was slung by its shoulder strap, along with the tommy
gun, and the grenade was crammed into the left-hand pocket of his ragged khaki
pants.