Assignment Madeleine

by Edward S. Aarons

  “Your friends are thoroughly efficient,” he said quietly.

  Madeleine’s voice was small. She had tied back her long red hair with a white ribbon. There was dust on her arms. The open collar of her blouse showed smooth, tawny skin down between her breasts. Her reply was almost inaudible. “They are not my friends, Durell.”

  “Yours or Charley’s—it’s all the same. Do you know their names?”

  “It is not the same. Not anymore."

  “Do you know who they are?" he asked again. “Those men in Paris and Algiers, and those in the councils of the rebels—they are all alike. They want this to go on.”

  “I don’t know who they are. But they are not my friends.”

  “Do you still expect me to believe in your change of heart?”

  “I don't expect you to believe anything,” she said. “You are a hard man. I have been watching you all day. I don’t think I like you, Durell. You frighten me a little. You think of only one thing. Nothing else is important but your job.”

  “In which well did Charley hide the money?”

  “I don’t know that.”

  “This is not the time to hold back on me, Madeleine.”

  “I told you, I don’t know.”

  The dog with the yellow eyes had followed them from the road. and now it was joined by three or four more—ghostly, skeletal figures that whined and padded in their tracks through the thickening darkness. Durell turned decisively away from the market place when he saw that the communal well here had been destroyed by a grenade that had caved in its walls. He went down a small alley, There was a house at the end of the alley, surrounded by a high wall, with a wooden gate in the wall. The gate had been blown away and the wall was scarred by bullets. Durell led the redheaded girl through.

  Nothing ever changes much in the desert, he thought. The passage of time had left few marks that hadn’t been erased or smoothed by the shifting winds until it all looked the same again. How long had it been since el-Abri had taken him here? More years than he cared to remember. This quiet house, this date palm leaning over the roof, were all well remembered. It might have been yesterday. He had hidden here with el-Abri for over a week, because the Vichy C.I. people had gotten wind of their radio transmissions with the Algerian maquis before the North African landings. He had eaten, slept, fought, and laughed with the Kabyle people here. He remembered el-Abri’s father, a tall man whose memories went back to the savage wars against the Foreign Legion. He was an old man even then, like a dark oak in dignity and strength. El-Abri’s mother had hidden behind the ways of ancient tradition, and he had rarely gotten more than a glimpse of her. She had existed as a soft, sliding footstep, a suspected smile behind a black veil.

  Nothing had changed. Yet everything was different.

  “What place is this?” Madeleine whispered.

  “El-Abri was born here,” Durell said.

  “You know it well?”

  “Yes.”

  “But no one is here now.”

  He didn’t reply. He walked around the house to the walled garden in the back. He found the bodies there.

  The old man had been tortured. The old woman had been stripped and defiled. Probably the mother had been killed first, in an attempt to make the old man talk to the rebels about where el-Abri could be found. The extremists considered el-Abri a traitor. Durell was sure that neither one had yielded anything about their son.

  The body of the old man hung by his feet from the limbs of a gnarled olive tree that had been ancient when Durell was here before. The thickening shadows made the scene grotesque, distorting it, adding a macabre touch to the heavy silence that oozed from every corner of the walled garden.

  He heard Madeleine being sick behind him. He turned back to her

  “Please. I want to go,” she whispered. “Why did you take me here?”

  “I had to know what happened," he said.

  “You’re too cruel. It’s not my fault these people were killed.”

  “You helped it to happen,” he said.

  She was shivering. “Let’s go back. Can we go back now?”

  “Not yet. We’ll look at that truck first.”

  But the truck was a disappointment. It had been too much to hope for, really. It was not far from the el-Abri house. Through the glasses it had looked intact, but when he walked up to it he saw that a grenade had thoroughly wrecked it, and that was why it had been abandoned here in this dead village.

  They were no better off than they had been that morning.

  Worse, probably.

  Chapter Sixteen

  IT WAS DARK when Durell returned to the others in the hills. A cool wind blew over the barren slopes, and the moon made distorted shadows in every direction. The dogs kept following them, whining, and when Durell ordered the others to come back to the village with him, the dogs padded after them.

  Chet walked beside Durell. You say everybody was killed or taken prisoner?”

  “It looks that way.”

  “And the truck is no good?"

  “We still have only our feet to travel on."

  “Can we make it back to Marbruk?”

  Durell looked at the two girls. "I doubt it."

  “Then I don’t see what we can do, Chet said. He scowled at the moonlight. “If the rebels worked according to pattern, they’ve also ruined the water supply here. There won’t be any food or water and no transportation. The telephone lines are cut. “It's a dead end."

  “Not quite,” Durell said, The French were in on the action here. You saw the jet yourself. They know what happened here."

  "Are you suggesting we stick around this charnel house until they show up in force?” Chet lifted his carbine dubiously. “Seems like better odds the rebels will come snooping back to collect any odds and ends before the Army makes it.”

  “That’s a possibility,” Durell admitted.

  ”And the rebels will collect us, too.”

  "We’ll take that chance,” Durell said. “It all depends on which side gets here first. We know that DeGrasse is short-handed in Marbruk. He may not be able to spare a detachment from his garrison, or he may not care to take the risk. The situation is unusual, with the extremists so bold—or so desperate—in this area.” Durell thought about the money and decided that could well be the cause of it all. He added, “But what happened in this village is something the French will want to investigate and publicize. It’s too important to disregard. I'm betting the French get here first. And the thing for us to do is to sit it out for them.”

  “I don’t think Jane can stand much more,” Chet said.

  “She can take another day of it. One way or another, it won't take longer than that.”

  ”I’m sorry about what happened with her and your prisoner.”

  “Nothing happened,” Durell said sharply. “You ought to realize that.”

  “I know, but still—” Chet looked at L’Heureux’ big, arrogant figure, then at his wife, walking with Madeleine. Both girls were talking in French. Jane’s French was halting, but she knew enough to make herself understood.

  “Everything has gone wrong between us, you know,” Chet said to Durell. “It’s a mess all around. I guess your own plans are plenty fouled up, too. We should have been in Algiers by now. If it wasn’t for that goumier driver ratting out on us, we’d be all right.”

  “Just be grateful he didn’t cut us down with his tommy gun.

  One of the dogs trailing after them began to growl suddenly. The sound was low and alarming in the dusk. Chet broke his stride and halted abruptly. His chunky body was tense and frozen as he lifted his carbine. Nothing moved in the shadowy market place except the dogs. L’Heureux, several steps ahead of the others, sat down on the edge of the community well in the middle of the square. The girls halted, too. In the moonlight, the village might have been asleep rather than murdered.

  The dog growled again. Chet snicked back the bolt of his carbine. “Who is it?” he called loudly. “Who’s there?�
�

  There was no answer. L’Heureux laughed thickly. “You jumpy, Chet, boy? You don’t know what war is like, do you? Too young for the big one, even too young for Korea, huh? You’re nervous, huh?”

  “Somebody is out there," Chet insisted. Out there in the dark.” He looked frightened in the shadowy starlight. “I heard something. And look at the dogs.”

  There came a heart-stopping beat of huge wings and an awkward, gorged shape lifted from one of the dark doorways. The dogs barked like maniacs. Durell looked up and saw the soaring wingspread of an African turkey buzzard. “

  “Keep your shirt on,” he said. And put down your gun"

  “This place is the worst I’ve ever seen.” Chet wiped the flat of his hand across his mouth. The cool desert breeze suddenly made his trousers flap loudly around his ankles. “I still think it was a man back there.”

  “It might have been,” Durell said.

  Chet looked sharply at him. “Did you see him?”

  “No, I didn’t see anything.”

  Chet blew air out from his lips. This place is like a berserk butcher shop. We just can’t expect the girls to stay here.”

  “Let’s see first if L’Heureux was telling the truth about his cache of money.”

  Chet looked angry. “This is a hell of a time to be thinking about money.”

  “It's important,” Durell said quietly.

  "You’d do better to put a bullet through that bastard’s head instead of protecting him.”

  “I may have to do just that," Durell said.

  L’Heureux looked indolent and at ease as Durell walked over to him. The man had no intention of running off into the shadows of the village now. He preferred to remain with them rather than risk being caught by returning rebels or blood-crazed survivors, with his hands tied behind his hack. Durell looked at the well in the market place. ”

  “Is this where you hid the money?”

  “Hell, no,” L’Heureux said. You don’t think I could slipped in here in the middle of all these gooks, do you?” He shrugged awkwardly and jerked his head. It’s a little way down that street. You going down the shaft after it?”

  “Why not?” Durell asked.

  “It’s tricky. I’d hate to see you lost and the money, too.”

  L’Heureux laughed thickly. “Maybe we ought to have chow first and refill our water bottles.”

  “Not from this well,” Durell said. He leaned over the stone parapet. “It’s been stuffed with a few dead bodies.”

  L’Heureux moved off ahead. The street was narrow, with small houses hidden behind walled gardens. A gutter ran down the center of the walk. Durell kept his gun ready. He couldn’t shake off an uneasy feeling about this dead village. He watched the windows and doorways carefully, but nothing stirred. He heard only the crunching of their boots and the dry rattling of palm fronds in the trees overhead.

  “Down here,” L’Heureux said.

  They were only two houses from el-Abri’s. A small communal well stood in a recess beyond a primitive Moorish arch. Several water jars lay in broken shards on the sun-baked bricks around the well.

  Durell leaned over and looked down. Starshine led his vision down the ancient, mossy brick sides. He smelled cordite and the acridity of a recent explosion. He could not see the water. He heard a faint trickling, but it sounded muffled, as if it were forced through debris. He backed off and found a stone and dropped it into the well, trying to estimate the depth before it struck bottom. The stone did not strike water. There came a miniature echoing, like a tiny landslide down the shaft. Twenty feet. Perhaps thirty.

  “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 w
as 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.