Assignment Madeleine (24 page)

“Old friend, listen to me,” Durell said.

“Stay where you are. Do not come near me.”

“I ask you to think twice of what you’re going to do.”

“Do not ask me anything. Do not speak to me now.”

“I will,” Durell said. “I’ve got to.” He drew a deep breath.
He knew that what he was going to say meant success or failure, perhaps life or
death. He could not remember a time when so much had depended on the words he
chose and the care with which he spoke them.

El-Abri was almost deranged with grief. His anger was as
wide in sweep and cruelty as the desert that had bred him. He looked like a
stranger to Durell, a man he did not know any more.

“Listen to me,” he said gently. “You said yourself that they
were innocent, these old people.”

“Be quiet, Durell. I warn you.”

“It would be wrong to hold my tongue now. You believe in an
eye for an eye, in vengeance, one death to avenge other deaths. But when does
this end, Hadji, and what will be gained?”

The Kabyle turned his head slowly. His eyes flashed white.
“You would have me spare L’Heureux?”

“Yes. Give him back to me.”

“How can you ask that now, after what my eyes have seen here
in this house of peace?”

“There are thousands of houses in this land where peace once
lived, but they are peaceful no more. Like your house, death and grief has come
to stay forever. You are not alone.”

“You ask too much!” el-Abri suddenly shouted.

“I ask only for reason and justice.”

There was silence. Then the Arab said quietly, “Those are
the words Orrin Boston used, when he first persuaded me to surrender.”

“Were those words wrong?”

“You ask me to think of words now?”

“I ask you to think of what you gain and what you lose by
killing L’Heureux now, in the heat of your anger, in the ice of your grief.”

“You talk too much, Durell. You weigh our friendship with
words that mean nothing. You think I cannot kill you, too, if you anger me?”

“I am not your enemy. And L’Heureux is only the little
finger of one hand of the enemy who killed your parents.”

“What are you saying?”

“Chop off a finger, and does your enemy die? Killing L’Heureux
will end nothing. Think about it, and you will see it is the truth. But if you
keep him alive, like a fatal poison, you will kill them. Keep him alive and
talking, to poison them. He has already talked to me. Alive, L’Heureux is your
weapon of vengeance. Kill him, and you do only what your enemies would want you
to do, what they would do themselves if they had him.”

The Kabyle came out of the doorway and crossed the garden.
His tall, thin figure moved stiffly and mechanically. He kept the knife
in his hand. He stood before Durell and his face in the starlight was a face of
stone, ravaged by wind and sand. He put the knife at Durell’s throat. Durell
did not step back. He felt the sharp pricking of the point as it cut into his
skin.

“My way is clear. Do not confuse me!”

“I will talk until you cut my throat,” Durell said.

The pressure of the knife increased momentarily.

Durell felt a thin, warm trickle of blood run down his neck.
He stood still. He heard the ragged breathing of the Kabyle. El-Abri’s eyes
glistened unnaturally in the dim light.

“I swore to my dead father and mother—”

“You swore vengeance. But L’Heureux did not kill them."

“He was one of those who did.”

“Only a small man, a tool, an agent of others.”

El-Abri hesitated. “That much I know to be true.”

“There is more truth in the rest of what I will say.”

The Kabyle trembled. “You are a brave man, Durell.”

“It is only that I know I am right.”

The knife was taken away from his throat.

Durell did not dare let his relief show in any relaxation of
his face, his body, or his voice.

“Sit down,” he said. “There is time yet. Once you were willing
to surrender to the French because you found yourself out of sympathy with
certain factions who seemed to be gaining control of the Algerian independence movement.
You disapproved of their terror methods, of their implacable refusal to
negotiate and compromise. You thought it was wrong for the extremists to murder
Moslem Algerians here and in France simply because they saw some reason in the
French side, too. Now their terror has visited you personally, giving you a
grievous loss. You see with your own eyes what this war has done, turning men
into savages, killing the innocent, bathing the land in senseless blood.”

“The French have been equally guilty,” el-Abri said.

“There is still a majority of Frenchmen who seek a reasonable
solution. All it requires is for passion to be controlled and rightful claims
to be weighed in justice. No problem is beyond solution by compromise and calm judgment.
You saw that once, when you were willing to surrender. You see it now.”

“No.”

“Baroumi can be made into a trap for those who push this war
to excess for their own selfish ends. There are men who are greedy for
power on both sides. In either case, be it one kind of dictatorship or another,
your people will lose, and the entire free world will lose.”

“What can one do?” the Kabyle said quietly. He had stopped
trembling. He put the knife away. “You offer no solution.”

“You can lay down our arms on honorable terms, as Orrin
Boston suggested. You agreed once, and you were betrayed by L’Heureux. But you
can turn L’Heureux over to the proper authorities. If you torture and kill him,
you accomplish only what your enemies wish—to stop his mouth and wipe him from
the earth. But if he names the names of our true enemies—yours and mine, Hadji—and
lives to charge them with his own tongue, then the most good will be
accomplished. I want to expose the cunning, greedy men on both sides who fatten
on violence and terror, wherever it is. You and I are not enemies. We
fight for the same ends. For peace, for the right of a man to walk the
world in secure dignity.”

“And if these men are exposed by what L’Heureux knows?”

“You said yourself that it may only be a straw. A small thing,
perhaps. But can we say which straw will tip the scales toward a better world?”

El-Abri walked to the olive tree near the garden wall and
looked down at the two bodies under the blanket by the flower bed. He
stood with his back to Durell for a long time. The village was silent. There
was only the endless wind in the upper fronds of the date palms nearby. Durell
said nothing more. He waited.

El-Abri spoke in a strangled voice. “No.”

He turned and walked to the garden gate. His figure was
tall and stiff. He carried himself strangely in his angry grief. “Your talk is
not for me, Durell. The burdens of the world are not my world. My people are
dead and I have in my hands the man who helped to kill them."

“Your people are dead and the burden is yours,” Durell said.
“If you refuse it, you are also responsible, and they died for nothing.”

El-Abri was at the gate. Durell felt the exhaustion of defeat
move over him like a great, engulfing wave. He looked down at his wounded
hand. It was bleeding again, and the pain was severe. He watched a drop of his
blood fall upon the dry soil of the garden. It didn’t matter. He had fought
many battles. If he lost this one, it would not bring the world down in crashing
flames.

El-Abri halted. His tall figure seemed to sway. He
took the knife and held it in both hands, looking at it. The starlight winked
on the cold steel blade.

He turned to Durell. Durell waited.

Suddenly the Kabyle drove the knife against the stone garden
wall. The blade shattered and broke with a high, clear, ringing sound. The
point fell to the earth. El-Abri dropped the hilt after it and turned back to
Durell.

"You can have your prisoner. And you can take me and my
men with you.”

Chapter Twenty-one

ALGIERS sparkled in the evening sun like a handful of jewels
dropped by a careless giant between the sea and the Sahel Hills. It did not
look like a city at war. The Rue Michelet was crowded, the narrow streets were
clogged With noisy traffic of Renaults and motorbikes; the terraced stairways
angling between the villas that hung between sea and sky were thronged with
people hurrying home from work or shopping. The only evidence of war was in a
roll of barbed wire guarding a bank entrance near the terrace café where Durell
sat, and the colorful uniforms and green berets of the French elite
paratroopers.

He was waiting for Monsieur Brumont, due from Paris. He had
checked into the St. George shortly after noon, consulted with various
officials in the sprawling complex of the Governor-General's building. The
surrender of el-Abri, the recovery of a quarter of a million American dollars
in rebel territory, and the capture of Charles L’Heureux had combined to send
officers and politicians there into a state of excitement that had kept the
wires to Paris sizzling hot.

Tomorrow the first news release would break, but Durell
was not concerned with that now. He felt a bone-weary exhaustion that had led
him back to the St. George after a doctor had attended to his injured hand. He
had had a long hot bath, then dinner, then a two-hour nap shot through with
gray nightmares.

The evening was warm in Algiers. He sipped an
apéritif
in the sidewalk café near the hotel and waited for
Brumont. People chattered all around him, read newspapers, talked,
flirted, laughed, and watched the passersby.

He felt lonelier than he had ever felt in his life.

He was watching for Brumont’s taxi from the
Maison
Blanche airport when he saw Jane Larkin get out of a
cab and walk quickly across the broad mosaic sidewalk toward the hotel.

Durell stood up and she saw him and came his way. She looked
different. She had found new clothing, and she wore a pencil-slim dress that
only accented the firm lines of her body. Her blond hair had been washed
and combed and she looked as if nothing had happened, until he saw her eyes. He
pulled out a chair for her and she joined him at his table.

“I can only stay a moment,” she said. She sounded breathless.
“I have to get back to the hospital as soon as possible.”

“How is Chet?”

“He’ll be all right now. They've got the bullet out. The rest
of it is just a lot of bruises. I’m so grateful to you, Durell.”

“How long will you stay in Algiers?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Jane said. “It depends on Chet.”

“I thought you were so anxious to get back to Texas.”

“Yesterday I thought I was anxious to have a lot of things.”
The waiter came with a
Pernod
at Durell’s signal, and
she twisted the glass in her fingers. She looked up at Durell, and he
thought her eyes looked very different. Her mouth was no longer petulant when
she smiled. “Yesterday I was someone else, I’m afraid. Someone not very nice at
all.”

“What is Chet going to do?”

“He’s planning to renew his contract with the oil
exploration company. T here’s a lot of work to do here. If they can find
oil in the Sahara, it may change a great many things in Algeria.”

“I see.”

Jane said quietly, “Anyway, I told Chet about the baby.”

“I didn’t know about that,” Durell said. “Congratulations.”

“I was horrible to him. I wasn’t going to tell him at all. Not
until after we got home.” She flushed and lifted her
Pernod
and set it down again without tasting it. “This sounds like a confession, I
suppose, but I’ve learned so much in the last day or two that I still haven’t
digested it all. There’s one thing, however. I’m going to stay with Chet, no
matter what he decides to do.”

“I’m glad,” Durell said.

She laughed. “You should see Chet. I have a lot to make up
for.” She picked up her purse and stood. Her eyes were bright. She looked happy
for the first time since Durell had met her, and he felt a touch of envy
and wondered about it. “You must excuse me now. I have to hurry and get back to
the hospital.”

He stood up with her and shook hands. “Of course. Good luck,
Jane.”

“Thank you. Goodbye.”

He watched her hurry into the hotel and when he turned back
to his drink, the world seemed emptier for him.

M. Brumont was wearing the same purplish blue suit with the
wide, pointed lapels that Durell had seen him wear in Paris. And the same
ubiquitous black felt hat and raincoat, although Algiers sparkled in the warmth
of the evening sun.

“I have just come from the Governor-General’s,” Brumont
said, after they shook hands and he ordered brandy.

“Everyone there is in quite a flap. I had quite a time
getting those idiots to release L’Heureux into the custody of my two men for
shipment to Paris.”

“What are you going to do with him?” Durell asked.

“He will be questioned by my colleagues at Paris
Intelligence and the
Deuxieme
Bureau, naturally.”
Brumont looked fat and harried, his black moustache bristling with excitement.
‘We followed the directions you gave us in your wire, you know, and searched
Sardelle’s
apartment in Paris. We found L’Heureux’
documents. Political dynamite,
m’sieu
. Proof of a
definite conspiracy to prolong the war until the people of France are
desperate for any peace, regardless of justice. Heads will roll in Parliament, I
assure you. And here in Algiers, as well. It will be of vast effect in helping
to bring about a reasonable solution to this distressing matter.”

“Have you been in touch with my Embassy?” Durell asked.

“They expect you in Paris tomorrow. Arrangements are being
made in regard to the disposition of L’Heureux. There will be no
difficulty on that, since for once—” Brumont’s smile was wry— “For once,
your State Department sees eye to eye with us in this matter.”