Assignment Madeleine

by Edward S. Aarons

  “Jane, honey,” Chet said. “Please get away from there.

  She turned to look at her husband, petulant anger changing to scorn when she saw Chet loading a revolver as he sat on the edge of the huge bed. “What do you think you can with that?”

  “You can’t tell what’s happening out there,” he said.

  “It’s the rebels, raiding,” she said impatiently.

  “I know that. And there’s a chance they’ll break in here.”

  “So you plan to defend me?”

  “I’ll try, Jane,” he said quietly.

  “You could have taken me away days ago.”

  “It wasn’t possible. You know how it’s been.”

  She spoke spite-fully. “Yes, but I didn’t know how it would be when you sent for me, when I was with Daddy in Houston. You made it all sound so romantic. So desert-sheikish. You didn’t have the nerve to tell me how filthy it really was.”

  Chet Larkin finished loading the .38 Smith & Wesson and put it on the bed beside him. His brown eyes were tired, candid, and patient. “Can you blame me for wanting you with me, Jane? Maybe I’m selfish, but I love you, honey, and I missed you so damned much I told a few lies to get you to join me here. I didn’t think you’d find it so bad, though. Not really. I thought you might get to like it.”

  “Like it?” She thinned her mouth. She smoothed her hands down her hips. “We’re likely to get killed by those crazy people.”

  “They probably won’t get this far. It’s just another raid.”

  He didn’t want to go on arguing. This thing between them went beyond Words, and he looked away from the anger and petulance in her face. He hadn’t dreamed Jane would be like this. When he’d sent for her, he didn’t think she’d find it all so bad, or that she’d be so helpless, and disinterested in everything around her. The only thing she fastened her attention on was the heat, the dirt, the minor discomforts of joining him here until his contract ran out with Davide et Fils. Should have left her in Algiers, he thought. She liked the plush St. George Hotel. She’d enjoyed that day at the salmon-colored basilica of Noire Dame d’Afrique, high on Mt. Bouzaréa above the city. She’d liked Algiers, the sense of wartime excitement, the shops and cafés and milk bars and green-bereted paratroopers on security duty. Asking her to join him in provincial Marbruk was a mistake.

  He had even entertained the dim hope that she could be persuaded to his renewing the contract. Davide was willing to make him chief of the geophysical crews, prospecting for oil out of Hassi Messaoud. Things were getting better out there. Lots of the oil riggers and prospecting engineers had their families with them, living in the prefab air-conditioned huts. The steel cabins were comfortable enough, with running water, electric lights, food trucked in from Algiers. And every fourth week you got flown hack to Algiers for free for a week of rest. Lots of other guys made it with their wives.

  But it hadn’t worked that way. Jane said no, flatly and definitely, in total outrage. She wanted to go home to Houston.

  They’d been married only a year when Chet got this chance to work with the oil exploration teams in the Sahara with this affiliate of the Société Francaise des Petroles. Jane was even more beautiful and more desirable now than she was when he first met her in Texas. He’d recognized from the first that her money and his need to carve a career for himself might come into serious conflict, But Jane always had refused to discuss it, laughing it off. And the first months had passed in a series of climactic ecstasies that gradually pushed his worries into the background. He’d always been a worrier, he thought too reserved and conservative. But living with Jane should have made him aware of her personality flaws, whatever the joys and carelessness of her ways. If he’d been more alert, he wouldn’t have sent for her, and then this hopeless break might never have come about.

  He had to admit his own weakness. He’d have done anything to avoid a showdown with her, to keep her on any terms. But he’d lost her. Jane held him in contempt now—not for anything special, but simply because he had brought her into the discomforts and dangers of rebellions Algeria. She thought he was selfish and cruel. He merely loved her.

  He watched her move back now, shrinking from the louder bursts of gunfire moving into the squalid town among the native mechtas. She lit a cigarette and hugged her arms across her breasts, cupping one elbow in the palm of her left hand. She was as tall as he, with long blond hair shining softly in the dim glow of the single lamp in the room. Still beautiful, he thought. He would never stop wanting her. But the last time they had enjoyed uninhibited love-making had been at the St. George in Algiers, after he’d met her plane at the Maison Blanche airport. That was two months ago. Watching her proud body in the thin negligee she wore, he wanted her now, this moment, ignoring the heat and danger that glittered in the night air. If she would only smile, he thought, she could name her own terms for the rest of their lives.

  “Jane, please sit down. And maybe you ought to get dressed.”

  “Why? Where would we go?”

  “It would be better if you were dressed,” he said.

  “You mean one of the natives might rape me?”

  “Don’t call them natives,” he said. “Don’t condescend toward them. It’s their country.”

  "You know what they are,” she said angrily. “Since when did you develop such a love for these dirty people?”

  “They’re not all the same. They need help. Try to understand them.”

  “They’re killing and looting right now, aren’t they? Just like a lot of savages.”

  “They’re fighting for something they want. Independence, freedom, equality-maybe they don’t know what it is themselves. Maybe they’re going about it the wrong way. They make mistakes, but so do the French. Don’t condemn them for trying.” He watched Jane drag angrily at her cigarette. “Look, the French commander will be here any minute, I’m sure. DeGrasse promised he'd make arrangements to get us to the coast tomorrow. The raid may hold him up, but he’ll show up soon. Try to control yourself, will you? Try not to find fault with everyone you meet here. This isn’t Texas, don’t forget, and your father is a long way off, in Houston. Throwing tantrums won’t buy us anything.”

  Her mouth was jeering. “And until the Marines arrive, you have your gun, is that it? Chet Larkin. My hero.”

  He didn’t reply. He put the revolver aside, listening to the alarming rattle of a machine gun that seemed to be firing from directly under their second-floor window. From one of the dark alleys across the market place, a man began to scream in a high, ululating voice. The sound of agony made Jane suck in her breath sharply. Her face went pale. The gun rattled again. Two slugs slashed through the narrow curtained window. The thin material puffed inward as if slapped by someone’s hand. Plaster chipped from the walls. Chet jumped for Jane and threw her to the floor and covered her with his body.

  She breathed erratically under his weight. No more shots came. Their faces were close together, and Chet could see the bright, excited luminosity of her gray eyes looking up at him. They were the eyes of a total stranger.

  Chapter Seven

  THE TELEPHONE rang. It sounded abrupt and shrill in the big room. Chet felt Jane wriggle impatiently under him, trying to release herself from his weight. “Let me up,” she said.

  He rolled aside. The telephone kept ringing on the taboret beside the big bed. The square outside was silent now. The whole town was plunged into a sudden, unearthly quiet, in which the only sound was the imperative ring of the phone. Chet walked across the room and picked it up.

  “Monsieur Larkin? One moment, please.”

  He lowered the telephone to his chest and looked at Jane. “It's the French commandant. Are you all right?”

  “Just a bit bruised from your gallant gesture,” Jane said.

  “The fighting seems to have stopped.”

  Jane examined a broken fingernail. “I want a drink.”

  “Help yourself.”

  “Where is it?”

  He
gestured toward the bottle of Martel near the bidet in the corner, and Jane moved toward it, pushing up her thick yellow hair at the nape of her neck. Chet put the phone to his ear again as a voice began to rattle in the receiver. “Yes?”

  “My apologies, m’sieu. Captain DeGrasse. We have been busy, you understand? I may not be able to see you to discuss your travel plans."

  “What goes on with this raid?”

  “It is being contained. I think you are quite safe where you are. But you must remain at the hotel. Under no circumstances are you or your wife to go into the streets until you hear from me again.”

  “When do we get out of here, captain?”

  “I had hoped to arrange a military convoy to take you by truck to Algiers tomorrow. But I find myself unable to spare enough men. However, a liaison plane is due any moment with an American who is to take a prisoner back to France. I think I can arrange with him to take you and Madame Larkin on the plane first thing in the morning.”

  “That will be fine,” Chet said. “I certainly appreciate if.”

  “You are all right? You have not been injured?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “You sound rather strange, m’sieu.”

  “It’s nothing. Thank you, captain.”

  “Remain at the hotel. I will call again directly when the plane lands.”

  Chet hung up. Jane was pouring a second drink of the Martel brandy. Her back was toward him. He got up and his shoes crunched on the plaster gouged from the walls by the two machine-gun slugs that had entered the room. He pulled the curtains tight over the window embrasure and put on another lamp. At least the town’s power plant hasn’t been knocked out yet, he thought.

  “DeGrasse says there's a plane coming in soon,” he told Jane. “We can leave on it in the morning.”

  “About time,” she said.

  He stood behind her, facing a small rococo mirror that reflected their images as Jane took another swallow of the brandy. He looked chunky and graceless beside her. When Jane had agreed to marry him, he had thought it a miracle of good fortune. He wasn’t particularly good-looking, although his square features had a clean ruggedness. His dark hair looked thick and unkempt at the moment. His quiet, patient manner bordered almost on shyness, and this had caught Jane’s attention first, that day when her father gave that cocktail party at the Houston ranch and he had been invited, in a patronizing gesture to the hired help, along with the other engineers. Jane’s father had a financial interest in Davide et Fils, and Chet had already applied for a job with the geophysical exploration team due to go into the Sahara.

  Jane gave him special attention because he had been the most reserved of the lot. Perhaps it intrigued her to draw him out. Certainly neither had expected the explosive attraction that built up between them during those next hours. Jane was bored, and Chet was something new to her. She was accustomed to flattery and adulation from many men, and Chet was different. Honest, she thought, and sincere. He was in love with her from the start. Because of what she was and what her money represented, he had stepped back until it was impossible to keep silent. Two weeks after they met, when he had seen her every day-usually at her demand—he asked her to marry him. And she had accepted.

  His trip to Sahara had been postponed for months while he worked in her father’s Houston offices. But he didn’t want to think about that time now. In self-defense, he had insisted on going into the field, and Jane had joined him after a two-month delay.

  It had taken just one year and two months, he thought bitterly, to turn them from impassioned lovers to enemies, coining! together now only to claw and hurt one another. Well, he was surrendering. Giving up his one chance to break free and stand on his own two feet. He loved her too much, he told himself. He couldn't help it.

  He put his hands on her shoulders, but she twisted free. “Don’t, Chet.”

  “We’ll be out of here by morning. Doesn’t that make you feel better, Jane?”

  “We should never have come here in the first place. You can see that now, can’t you?”

  “All right, yes. It was a mistake.”

  “You know you had no right to ask me to come here.”

  “We’ve been over that before. I told you I was sorry.”

  “Well, we'll talk about it when we get home,” Jane said.

  He hesitated. “Honey?”

  She sat on the edge of the bed and studied her broken fingernail. He felt helpless. He felt angry. He wanted to slap her and make love to her, right now. He wanted to take her by force, no matter what happened. He started toward her, and someone knocked on the door.

  Jane looked at him, startled. For a moment, fear shone in her wide gray eyes. Chet picked up the gun. ‘Who is it?” he called. ”

  “M’sieu Larkin? Madame? You are safe? It was Felix Bourges, the proprietor. “May I enter for a moment?”

  “Of course,” Chet said.

  He shifted the gun to his left hand and tossed his own flannel robe to Jane. Then he slid back the bolts on the wooden door and opened it an inch or two. It was Bourges. The Frenchman was small and dapper in a gray seersucker suit, with a round perspiring face and a heavy moustache. His hair was very thin, s owing a freckled scalp through the strands. He stood alone in the corridor. Chet let him in, and Felix entered with a sidling motion.

  “Mon Dieu, it was a close one, no? You are certain you are all right, madame?”

  Jane said, “It's a fine thing, when your guests get shot at.

  “Jane, it wasn’t Felix’ fault,” Chet said quickly.

  “My apologies, madame. But the danger is ended, I think." Felix laughed and reached back into the hallway and lifted a rifle, patted it, and put it down out of sight again. “I am a member of the territorials, you know. We colonists have to fight our own battles many a time. Some of those devils actually reached the market place here, but my friends and I drove them back.” His eyes lingered on Jane’s body. She hadn’t bothered to throw on Chet’s flannel robe. Chet felt a pang of embarrassment for her and said, “Is everything all right here?”

  “Oh, yes, no one was injured.” Bourges sank into a rattan chair and puffed out his lips as he expelled an exhausted breath. “It is a serious matter.” Felix got up and helped himself to brandy from the Martel bottle.

  “You two are the last of my guests."

  “I’ve had a call from DeGrasse, by the way, Chet said.

  ‘“There’s a plane coming in tonight. We re flying out on it in the morning.”

  “Perhaps you are the fortunate ones, then. A plane, you say?” Felix swallowed the brandy. His round face was shiny with sweat. “It will be the regular mail flight from Algiers.” He looked at his watch. “Due now. We can go on the roof to watch for it, if you like.”

  “Good,” Jane said. “I could use the air.”

  “Is it safe?” Chet asked.

  “The fighting in the town is over.”

  Felix was correct about the fighting in the town, but the crackle of gunfire still came from the outskirts of Marbruk as Chet and Jane stepped out on the roof of the hotel. From the crenelated parapet, Chet could see across the jumbled alleys and streets to where a fire burned luridly on some farm in the foothills. The hot wind blowing from the south made the flames leap crazily.

  “The airfield is over there," Felix said, pointing.

  Chet saw lights come on in the long crisscross pattern to the southwest. At the same moment he heard the drone of a single-engine plane over the town He looked at Jane as she leaned against the parapet. She was smiling. She had not looked so happy since he had met her at Maison Blanche in Algiers. She had looked like that on the Rue Michelet, that day they went shopping. And that afternoon, in the shadowed heat of their hotel room, when they were alone. It was a lifetime ago, never to be recaptured.

  He knew what Jane was thinking. The plane meant rescue for her, deliverance from heat and boredom and dirt. Freedom from him, too. He didn’t want to think about it. Anger moved in him. He h
ad yielded everything he could, including his self-respect. But he still didn’t know if it would be enough for her.

  The plane was landing now. He saw it distinctly, a bright yellow bug in the glare of a beacon that picked it up as it headed into the wind.

  “It’s awfully small,” Jane said.

  “The roads to the coast are blocked,” Felix Bourges told her. “The telegraph lines are down. And those devils out there have a radio-jamming station that prevents reliable communication. You are lucky, madame, that we retain control of the air.”

  The plane had touched down. The wings rocked a little on the rough landing strip. Chet saw Jane lean eagerly over the parapet to watch. Then the plane stopped and more lights came on, making the military hangar stand out against the black of the night. It was like watching a tiny stage far away, surrounded by dark velvet.

  He saw the explosion before he heard the sound. Even before the tiny plane lurched up and went over on its nose, one wing crumpling, he knew it had been a grenade, thrown by someone on the dark edge of the landing strip. He saw some people get out of the plane and stumble away. Two, then another. He couldn’t be sure about it, because the distance was too great. Felix began to swear in a mixture of French and Arabic. Jane made a small moaning sound.

  There came another explosion, and the plane in front of the hangar burst into red and yellow flames.

  Chapter Eight

  DURELL felt the blast of heat from the exploding plane like the slap of a giant hand. The thought flickered through his mind that the man who had thrown it had Waite just a minute too long. The pilot and Madeleine

  had already descended, and he had just followed them. There had been no other passengers.

  A sheet of flame burst from the tanks, and he fell, grabbing at Madeleine to shield her from the heat, and then they picked themselves up and ran into the darkness at the edge of the strip. The light from the burning plane expanded, following them. The pilot was all right. There were sirens, and a racing jeep that swung toward them. Durell watched the plane burn from the edge of the field. He kept a firm grip on Madeleine’s arm. The girl was shaken, but nobody was hurt. He heard the sudden rattle of an automatic rifle at the edge of the field, and the spotlight caught the running figure of a man in ragged khaki. The man screamed and twisted and fell as the rifle chattered again. Half-a-dozen French paratroopers in green berets, their weapons slung from shoulder straps, ran toward the guerrilla. The jeep swung their way, raising dust and sand in the eerie shafts of light moving over the landing strip.