Assignment Madeleine (5 page)

Bight now ho’s in a hot little cell in an outpost in
Marbruk. He knows a lot about the rebels that we don’t know, and intelligence
on it is vital to both the French and to us. So bring him back.”

“I wish they’d send somebody else. If he killed Orrie—”

“One other thing. That quarter-of-a-million in cool green
American currency, in the hands of the rebels might be hard to explain to
Brumont and his people.”

“Does he know about it?”

“No. One little item we managed to keep from him.”

Remington’s eyes were shrewd. “L'Heureux has to be brought back
with his tongue wagging. I know you wouldn’t mind seeing him dead, Sam. So
would I. It’s a rough deal, because much as you’d like to break his neck,
you’ll have to protect him from a couple of thousand enemies every inch of the
way. The French over there blame him for the Marbruk massacre. The rebels want
their hands on him because of some double-cross—probably the money matter. But
you wrap him up in cotton wool and deliver him to the Embassy and Brumont.
Those are your orders.”

“Is the military situation in Marbruk really tough?”

“Couldn’t be worse. The French military there are remote,
isolated, no men to spare, especially since the rebels are running their
offensive all along the Tunisian frontier. Nobody can be spared at the moment.
We could wait a few days, of course, for the area to come back under
control—it’s bubbling like a witch’s cauldron, right now —but you can get in
and poke around, meanwhile.”

“All right,” Durell said. “Is that all?”

“Isn’t it enough?”

Durell nodded. “Thanks for nothing.”

He went downstairs through Madame Jacques’ kitchen and
reached the front of the café a few moments later. He had been absent only ten
minutes. He had left Deirdre and Madeleine at their table, eyeing each other
like uninhibited jungle cats. Now they sat side by side, and the redheaded
model was holding a handkerchief to her eyes while Deirdre patted her and made
soothing sounds of consolation.

Both girls looked at Durell as if he were the common enemy.
Madeleine Sardelle smiled first.

Chapter Five

FAR BELOW was the Mediterranean, black and fathomless. The
Air France plane to Algiers droned smoothly southward after its single stop at
Marseilles. Madeleine Sardelle leaned back in her seat with her head pressed
against the cushioned chair. Her eyes appeared to be closed, but they were not.
From under the dark fan of her lashes she watched Durell, seated beside her.
His face was in repose. A calm and dangerous man, this one, she thought. It
would not be easy to fool him. He seemed quick and competent-and handsome, too.
Something stirred in her as she thought about him, and she was annoyed with
herself. When would she ever change? Those days were over, when a man—any
man—meant someone to conquer and use and then discard. Charley was the last of
a long series of faces she had known in passion and secret contempt.

Soon it would all be changed, she thought gratefully. She
had picked the right one at last, in L’Heureux. If all went well—and it was her
job to see that it went smoothly—then the past would be buried and forgotten.
There would be South America, the warmth and luxury of all the money they would
ever need for the rest of their days. True, Charley might prove to be a bore;
he was such a brute, so uncouth; but time would take care of that. She decided
not to worry about anything in the future that was not specific.

She had grown up in a hard, bitter school. She was going
home now, but there was no happiness in the thought. Quite the contrary. She
could remember back through the twisted years to her father, that huge man with
his moustache, his Legionnaire’s uniform. And her mother, meek and veiled, a
Moslem who had abandoned her people to live with a Frenchman. There were many
memories afloat on the sea of her mind like drifting bits of debris.
After her father had left them, her mother went home to her village with
Madeleine, and they lived on the grudging bounty of an uncle, a local fisher-man.
When Madeleine was twelve, she had been sold to a friend of her uncle’s for the
price of a new length of anchor rope. That was one night she would never
forget. That was the night when the curtain was torn and she made the vows by
which she had lived ever since.

Fortunately, she had inherited French looks and a figure
from her father. The war years were only a tangled skein of memories, but the
Americans who remained in Africa afterward had been a lucrative source of
income. She learned English along with diversified arts of love; she
learned to sing and dance in the nightclubs of Algiers; she came to use men and
learned to Europeanize herself until no one guessed her origins.

Thinking of this, she watched Durell from under the delicate
arcs of her lashes. Brumont knew all the details of her life, and she wondered
how much had been told to this silent man. She was a little afraid of Durell.
He seemed different, more remote. She would have to be careful, she thought
again.

Odd about Charley. She had already heard about the big
American, the wild one, the Happy One, in the months when she had moved in
rebel circles on orders from Brumont. Brumont had given her the job because of
the facts in her dossier; there had been long interviews at offices in the
Deuxieme
Bureau; she had convinced them of her patriotism,
her love for France.

Madeleine laughed silently. All that mattered was money and
Brumont paid well. It was easy enough to contact L’Heureux. It pleased her
vanity to play both ends of the game, and it paid well. It paid even better
after that night on the beach at Nice, on that holiday they took together, she
playing the part of an innocent type, a
petite
from Madame Sofie’s salon. She had gotten Charley drunk and let him think he
had taken her by force after that struggle in the water, near the rocks. It had
been amusing to let him tear the Bikini off her, to let him think he was the
master. Now she was sure that Charley was in love with her. Her own feelings
were confused. When she thought of him deeply, she felt fear, more than
anything else. She never knew what he was thinking. She was more afraid of
Charley by far than of this man beside her in the plane.

But Charley had the money. And money was the future.

Things had gone wrong because
Charley’d
had to kill that man, Orrin Boston, and he was in military custody now. But she
had received his message by courier last night. He wanted her to accompany the
agent being sent to take him back to Paris. The money waited for them out in
the desert, amid the wild
jebels
of the south. She would help Charley to escape.
Nothing could stop them.

“Madeleine,” Durell said quietly.

She opened her eyes wide, hearing his voice above the drone
of the plane's engines. “Yes,
m’sieu
.”

“A penny for your thoughts.”

Panic touched her. Could he read her mind? “I was thinking
of the American girl you introduced me to. Is she your fiancée?”

“In a way.”

“She is very lovely. And very sympathetic.”,

“One of her endearing faults,” Durell said. “But you were
not thinking about Deirdre. Charley is on your mind, right?”

She persisted with Deirdre, clinging to the subject.

“Are you in love with Miss Padgett,
m’sieu
?”

“I think so, yes.”

“Then she is a lucky woman, I think.”

“She’s on her way back to the States. And I’m here with
you."

Madeleine opened her pale eyes wide. ‘She turned her face
toward him as they sat side by side on the double seat, and in turning this way,
her leg moved and her thigh pressed his. “Is there significance in what
you have just said?”

He met her smile. “I have my faults, too. And you and I
understand each other. We are in the same business. We know the dangers of the
world and its few pleasures, too, perhaps.”

“You know that I am in love with my Charles.”

“Tell me about him, then,” Durell said.

“There is nothing to tell. Brumont made it plain what a
woman’s role must be in this business of yours.”

“The obvious one,” Durell said.

“Yes. So I became the woman of Charles L’Heureux, in order
to become his confidant, so to speak. Does that shock you?”

“Not really.”

“And I fell into the trap of my own making.”

“I’m not so sure of that,” Durell said.

“But I do love him. And I believe in his innocence.”

“You know what he is. You know the crimes he has committed.
An adventurer, fattening on a troubled world.”

“But not a murderer,” Madeleine said flatly.

“How can you be sure?”

“When a woman lives with a man, she comes to know his
capacities for matters other than love. If he is considered such a terrible
man, why did your Mr. Boston take him into the service as an agent in the first
place?”

“We compromise when we have to. L’Heureux is perhaps the
only American on the scene who knows as much about the rebels as he does. Orrin
Boston heard about him and chose to use him.”

“So you think my Charles killed him. But I will help
Charles, if I can. You must understand that.”

“There will be no help for him, if he killed Orrin.”

“We shall see,” Madeleine said quietly.

Durell looked at his watch. Africa, the bright city of
Algiers, and the airport at
Maison
Blanche was just
over the horizon of night.

Chapter Six

THE COMMAND POST of the chasseur unit stationed at Marbruk
occupied a stone farmhouse on the lower slope of the
jebel
overlooking the valley. The
farm had been a prosperous one, thanks to irrigation here on the fringes of the
southern desolation. It had been owned by a René St. Leger, a wealthy Frenchman
whose family had grown olives, and grapes for the strong Algerian wines, for
three generations. René had been knifed in the back while patrolling the town
with his territorial unit of home guards two months ago, and Captain DeGrasse
had occupied the farm when the rest of St. Leger’s family, wife and two
daughters, moved into their villa at Algiers.

Aside from the main farmhouse, there were two stone barns,
and in the northernmost of the barns, half a mile from the house itself, was
the military prison. Two or three outhouses formed a cluster suitable for both
defense and internal control.

At nine o’clock, Charley L’Heureux slipped a small wad of
hundred-franc notes to the private who guarded his cell in what had been the
hayloft and accepted a bottle of cognac in return. A hot wind blew through the
barred windows of his room, and sand hissed and moved along the Wooden floor.
He could feel it against his bare ankles, like the stinging bites of a thousand
gnats.

“
Mon
ami
,” L’Heureux; said to the guard, “a thousand thanks.
This will save my life.”

“Nothing can save your life. Not the life of a traitor.”

The guard was a thin, tired man from St.
Nazaire
,
and he was homesick and fed up with Algeria and the rebels. Nothing he had seen
since he had been drafted could explain to his clerical mind what he was doing
here. “And I am not your friend, understand?”

‘Who did I betray?” L'Heureux asked. “No one but myself,
Pepi.”

“One grows philosophical in jail, that is a fact.”

“Look here,” Charley insisted. “I’m not French, am I?”

“You have a French name.”

"But I am
 
an
American. I was born in
Arostuga
, Maine, U. S. A.”

“Then you are a traitor to your country, too,” Pepi said. He
had a tommy gun slung by its strap over his neck and nestled against his belly.
“I do not wish to discuss it with you. I spit on you.”

“Yet you take my money.”

“At home I am an accountant, and I know that money is
money,” Pepi said. “It's all good and all bad, and I’m not a philosopher about
money. One has no choice. It is needed.”

“What will they do to me, Pepi? Have you heard?"

“If I had my way,” the guard said, “we would do to you as
the rebels did to the people of Marbruk. One fights fire with fire;
it is as simple as that, to my mind. They kill and torture and mutilate. It is
no better fate than you deserve.”

“But the captain will not have me shot at dawn, eh?”

The guard shrugged. “No, and I am sickened to have to
relieve your mind of that.”

The guard moved away, climbing down the steps to the stone floor
of the huge barn. Charley listened to his footsteps die away, standing in an
attitude of acute attention. Finally he heard only the endless rattle of the
wind and the hiss of sand blown in through the window. He went back to the cot
with the cognac bottle.

He was a big man with powerful shoulders. His curly blond
hair was cropped short over a broad, weathered face. His eyes were greenish, reflecting
hard and ugly things. He had seen too much of North Africa, for too long. He
had heavy brows that were black in contrast to his pale, boyish hair. His khaki
shirt was open down to the waist, and the hair on his chest was also dark. His
khaki trousers were ragged and sweaty, torn at the cuffs. His sandals were
cracked. He looked at his hands around the cognac bottle, big, strong hands
that had helped him out of many a bad corner. But he couldn’t remember as tight
or bad a corner as this.

He wanted to laugh and curse all at once. He had reached
down low this time, really low; but he saw himself as if crouching in the dirt
only for the final spring to the top, to ultimate success.

He wondered if Madeleine had gotten his message. Better to
do without her in this—for that matter, he'd like to forget her entirely, since
he was tired of her and looked upon her as an Arab mongrel, hardly fit
for the life he planned ahead. And he still didn’t trust her fully, knowing she
was Brumont’s agent. Still, he needed her now. She could misdirect the agent
coming for him, like a magician's assistant on stage. And even if it were only
for a moment, it would be a crucial moment. The time for escape, and that would
be enough.