Charley turned back to Jane.
She had fainted.
He didn’t care.
Durell felt rage move in him and break all the cool and calculating moves his training required. It didn’t matter now. Jane’s move hadn’t worked—it had been disastrous. He knew that this was the time to be calm, to let what was happening up there go on. He couldn’t let it happen. He couldn’t stay down here and let Charley do what he was doing.
“Get me loose,” he whispered harshly.
Madeleine trembled as she untied the knots binding his wrists. “The animal,” she whispered. “I don’t want to look at him up there with her. Like an animal in the field. But he knows I will watch. It is part of the amusement and pleasure for him.”
“Hurry it up,” Durell said.
“I think he killed Chet.”
“Killing comes easy for Charley. Did you see where he put the guns?”
“Just inside the cave entrance.”
“But he’s got the pistol with him, right?”
“And the grenade.”
Durell’s hands came free, He moved his arms a little. He looked up at the cave. The two figures up there were locked together as one. He stood up. He kept his hands behind his back, as if they were still tied. There are so many ways to kill a man, Durell thought. Simple, easy ways. You don’t need a knife or a gun. A pebble would do. A rolled-up newspaper. Orrie Boston had told him that one. A stiffened finger, stabbing and rupturing. He could do it. He wanted to do it.
Madeleine put her hand on his arm as he moved to take the first step up there. “No, wait. He will only kill you, too.”
“I can get up there fast,” Durell said.
“But you will not try to kill him, will you?”
“I have to bring him in alive and talking.”
“But he has no such inhibitions.” Madeleine was angry and impatient. “Oh, don’t you see? We are both angry. And shocked. And that poor girl up there—with her husband dead—”
“We don’t know Chet is dead.”
“And we don’t dare go to see if he needs help, do we?
“I’m going,” Durell said.
She held him back again. “Wait.” She breathed quickly.
She faced away from the cave entrance. “He will kill you. I know him. He is waiting for you now. After the husband, then you. It is his way of pleasure. It is what he planned, you see. Now he is waiting for you.”
“He’s busy,” Durell said cruelly.
“Not so busy that he doesn’t know we are here talking and wondering. He does this deliberately, don’t you see?”
Durell looked down at her. She looked small and slight, no longer the elegant Parisienne model. He almost liked her. But she was right. He couldn’t kill L’Heureux.
“And your hand?” Madeleine said. "How is your wounded hand?”
He had forgotten about it. Now that she had cut the bonds on his wrists, the circulation was restored. He looked down at his fingers. There was blood on them. There was a long scar on the back of his left hand, and it was bleeding again, and when he flexed his fingers and made a fist, he felt the pain go all the way up his arm into his shoulder.
“Let me go up,” Madeleine said urgently. “He is expecting you, so I will go. I can get one of his guns. He won’t stop me, you see. That type will be amused. I have heard stories about his habits with girls. More than one girl. The thought will come to his head when I walk up there. He will think I want—he will be diverted, you understand.”
“No, I can’t let you go first.”
“It will distract him. Are you so angry you are blind? I thought you knew your business better than this. You think you shouldn’t send me, a woman, first? We will all die if we do not win. I am going. You can’t stop me.”
“Madeleine—”
She turned from his grip and walked quickly up the slope, almost running, before he could stop her. The wind blew her hair across her cheek. Durell watched her walk through a pattern of silver moonlight and dark shadow. He cursed, started after her, checked himself. If he followed now, while Charley watched, they would both be killed.
A few pebbles rolled with surprising noise from under Madeleine’s shoes. She came to the long shapeless mass of Chet Larkin’s body. She heard him breathing, though he didn’t move when she paused beside him. But he was still alive. Maybe he would die soon, in a few minutes. There wasn’t time to look at him to see if she could help.
She walked on toward the cave.
Charley was sitting up. Jane lay on her stomach with her face in her arms. Charley looked at her and smiled strangely.
“Mad? Come to see the fun?”
“Charley, you’re too cruel,” she said.
“Come on up, Mad.”
“I’m coming, Charley. What’s the matter with Jane?”
“She’s a sensitive type. She passed out, right away.”
Charley’s voice was thick with something that went beyond anger. He looked irritated, sitting with his legs crossed tailor-fashion, beside the unconscious girl. The cave was a wide, dark crevice behind him. She wanted to turn her head to see if Durell was following, but she didn’t dare move Charley’s attention that way. Had he started yet? She couldn’t be sure. She walked all the way to where Charley sat. His close-cropped, yellow hair looked white in the starlight. His face looked shapeless and slack, as if the bones had dissolved in acid cruelty. She had never seen him like that before. She tasted hatred and enjoyed it.
His voice stopped her as it he had slapped her.
“You untied Durell, didn’t you, Mad?”
“What?”
“You cut him loose. You’re on his side now, right?”
“Charley, listen to me—”
“And here he comes,” Charley said.
He stood up all in one movement, with swift, fluid grace. Madeleine tried to stop him when he took the Colt from his belt. She thought he was going to fire at Durell. She could hear Durell’s steps running behind her, crunching on the rough wadi floor. Then she saw Charley turn his head as if his neck was stiff and she saw he was pointing the gun at her. He was smiling queerly. She heard the crash. She felt the bullet hit her with incredible, tearing strength.
Then she was on the ground, conscious of being on her side, with a great numbness inside her body. There was no pain. She looked up and saw Charley standing over her. He still smiled. It was the same look he’d had on his face the first time he had taken her. He pointed the gun at her again, and she saw everything very clearly, all the mistakes she had made, all the little cruelties and vicious lies she had helped him with, and she knew that this had been the biggest mistake of all. She saw his knuckles move on the trigger of the gun and just before the gun fired again, she knew that he had killed her.
And then she knew nothing any more.
Chapter Nineteen
DURELL kept running at the second shot. His anger pushed him forward, one step after another. He didn’t care about his orders now. He wanted to kill L’Heureux. If Charley let him get five steps nearer, he could do it.
“Hold it,” Charley said thickly. The gun swung toward him.
Durell stopped. “Is she dead?”
“She’s dead.”
“She was your girl.”
“You can have her now,” Charley said.
Madeleine looked like a child’s doll tossed idly aside
and discarded. Her eyes were wide and staring. The
caught the starlight with an illusion of life. Durell swallowed. His anger refused to subside. He couldn’t control it. His life depended on this control, but he couldn’t find it. He couldn’t do it.
He took two more steps toward the man who straddled the earth like a behemoth atop a mound of his victims.
“You’ve done quite a bit tonight, Charley. You ought to be proud of yourself. You’ve cleaned us out.”
“Not quite,” Charley said. “You’re still around.”
Durell could not see his face. The moon
had gone down below the upper edge of the wadi, although long slabs of its pale light still slanted into the far corners of the ravine. Charley’s face was a dark wedge turned toward him, a black outline against the pale luminosity of the sandstone behind him.
Durell thought he heard sand run hissing into the wadi somewhere to the rear. He heard a stone fall, rattling, bouncing, clinking. Charley heard it, too. Neither man moved. They both listened. There was the wind. The stars were silent. There was nothing more to hear.
Durell knew he couldn’t go back now. And Charley’s gun kept him from going forward. Three steps away. He remembered how it had been at the Maryland farm, where Orrie Boston had been an instructor. He remembered techniques for assault, for murder. But Charley L’Heureux knew these techniques too. Charley would be good at them. He had to be good, to win against Orrie, who had already become suspicious of him.
“Go back and sit down, Durell,” Charley said. His voice rang harshly in the night. “I've got the money, I've got the guns. The rebels will be here soon.”
“When they come, you’ll kill me, too,” Durell said
flatly. “You’ll have to, because of the money."
“Maybe you’ll be reasonable.”
“I don’t seem to have anything to lose,” he said.
He made his move when Chet Larkin groaned and stirred. The sound caught Charley’s ear as Durell drove up toward him. There was no stopping now. Durell came in low under the big man, and he heard Charley suck in his breath an instant before he twisted aside. The gun crashed. The report was thunderous against the dark sandstone walls of the wadi. The sound of it blotted out Charley’s yell as Durell hit him. Durell’s shoulder smashed just above Charley’s knees. He felt the gun club his back with wild, massive strength. Charley went over backward. His knee clipped Durell’s chest and then they both slid and slipped and rolled down the dark slope to the bottom of the ravine.
Durell’s first aim was simply to hang on. He could not let Charley get separated from him, because then Charley’s gun would come into play again. But his grip on Charley’s wrist was only a fragile hold. He managed to cling to it while they rolled over and over down the slope. Charley’s weight was plunging, thrashing, punishing. They slammed into a boulder, and a grunt of pain came from the big man, and Durell flipped his weight against the thick wrist, smashing it against the stone. The gun fell free. Sand went hissing out from under their straining bodies, and they slid in a small avalanche to the very bottom of the wadi.
The gun was gone, lost in the sand.
The dim starlight failed to light the darkness here. With the gun out of the way, Durell rolled aside and got his legs under him and lifted himself to a crouch. There was little to see. The dark walls of the ravine rose in smothering heights to right and left. The sand embankment down which they had tumbled from the cave entrance was behind him. Charley stood with his hands held away from his sides, his shoulders hunched stiffly forward. He was a faceless dark mass, and Durell could smell the man’s sweat and hear his thick, controlled breathing, and that was all.
“Come on,” Charley said. His whisper was ragged.
“Come on, Durell.” ”
“Give it up,” Durell said. “There’s no place to go.”
“I finished them up there. I got the money. There’s only you. Come on, come closer.”
“We’re not alone,” Durell said.
“What?”
“They’re watching us.”
“What?”
“From the top of the cliff. There, off to the left.
There’s starlight on a rifle barrel.”
Charley’s laughter bubbled in his chest. “I wasn’t born yesterday, Durell. That’s an amateur trick.”
“No trick,” Durell said. “Look at him up there.”
Charley’s head moved fractionally: The glint of reflected starlight was no longer there. A cool wind blew down the narrow length of the wadi, and sand suddenly came in a stinging eddy behind Durell’s back, blowing toward his enemy. It went into Charley’s eyes, but Durell didn’t move. He knew that if he closed with Charley now, he wouldn’t stop until Charley was dead. Or until Charley killed him. His anger was too violent, born of what had happened to Orrie Boston, the Larkins, and Madeleine. He was afraid of what was happening to him because of his anger, but he couldn’t help it. Charley dashed sand from his eyes and took a step backward and Durell stood where he was. Charley sounded puzzled, speaking through the windy darkness.
“You could’ve taken me.”
“Why bother? We’re both in a bottle and the cork is tapped in tight.”
“I don’t see anything,” Charley said.
Sand hissed around their feet. Charley backed up another step. His shoulders touched a huge boulder and he jumped, turned his head quickly to scan the sandstone cliffs around them, then turned back to Durell.
Durell’s anger was beginning to ebb. “They’re all around us,” he said. “Watching us.”
“The rebels?”
“Maybe. Call out to them and see,” Durell suggested.
Charley was silent. His breathing was ragged. Only his eyes flashed white in the dark mask of his face. Durell knew he could take him now. The gun was gone, lost in the sand. Charley had changed. Something had put fear into him. But it was not the fear of a weak man. It made him all the more dangerous at the moment.
Still, there had been an imperceptible shift in the man, and Durell took advantage of it. He closed the gap fast, his body slamming Charley back against the boulder. Charley hit him in the stomach, tried to knee him, hit him again with a sledge-hammer right. Durell took the blows and returned them. He slashed at Charley’s throat, missed the point he sought, and slashed again. Charley screamed. He tried to escape. He slid sidewise to get away from the rock at his back. Durell didn’t let him go. He struck again and Charley made a queer coughing sound, kicked at Durell, and caught Durell on the thigh. Durell spun away, came back again. He saw Charley’s ravaged face. It was the face of his enemy. The face of Orrin Boston’s murderer. He didn't want to stop now. He struck again and again. His left hand was bleeding. He felt the pain all the way to his shoulder and down his side. He did not spare himself. Charley went to his knees.
He was strangling.
“Don’t kill him, Durell,” someone said.
Durell stopped. He was trembling. His anger shook and churned in his belly. He kept watching Charley and didn’t turn around to see who had spoken. Charley was trying to crawl away. The man’s huge body looked curiously flattened and crushed. His hands scrabbled at the gravelly soil. His big head with the curiously blond-silver crop of hair hung down from his massive, muscular shoulders. His breathing was queer, like a wounded animal’s.
“Durell,” someone said again.
Durell turned. It was Hadji el-Abri.
The Kabyle guerrilla and his men seemed to have sprung up all around them like ghosts conjured out of the moonlight. El-Abri stood tall and straight, a tommy gun in his hands, pointed at Durell and Charley. His men stood in a circle just beyond. Their faces were the faces of the wind and the desert.
“Save him for me, Durell,” el-Abri said quietly.
Durell looked at the Kabyle. “How long were you
watching?”
“A few minutes. You knew I was here?”
“I was expecting you. I know Talek must have sent you a radio signal about us. Talek was your man, right? It couldn’t have been anyone but you.”
El-Abri looked around the wadi. “What about the others with you?”
“I don’t know. They need attention.”
“I have a medical officer with me.” The Kabyle gave swift orders in Arabic. One of the armed men in ragged khaki nodded and went up the slope toward the cave entrance where Madeleine’s body lay. Durell watched him for a moment. He saw the Arab doctor look at Madeleine and then turn away with a shrug and help Jane Larkin to her feet. Jane ran, stumbling, to Chet. The doctor knelt and began doing something to Chet
’s shoulder. Durell looked back at el-Abri.
“Are we enemies?” he asked the Kabyle quietly.
“The choice was yours.”
“L’Heureux is still my prisoner. I still claim him.”
“Not any more. He belongs to me, now.” El-Abri issued another quiet order. One of the men stepped forward and gave Durell a drink of brackish water from his canteen. Durell sat down on the sand. His hand was bleeding heavily. He tore a strip from his shirt and bound it roughly. He was still shaking. He looked at el-Abri's face and saw no friendship there. No help at all. It had all been for nothing, he thought. All the nightmare of the last twenty-four hours, the struggle to get away from here, might never have been.
He got up and walked through the circle of guerrillas. Nobody stopped him. He went up to the cave entrance, beyond Madeleine’s body, and picked up the box of currency and walked back again.
He looked at Charley. Charley sat on the sand, hugging his knees, his head lowered. He had the mark of death upon him.
Chapter Twenty
MADELEINE was buried before they moved out. Durell noted a quick tension among the guerrillas, a wariness in the way they moved, as if they expected to be trapped in this place. Even el-Abri showed his impatience with the delay. But the grave was dug and Madeleine’s body placed in it and covered over with the stones and sand of the desert.
“She was L’Heureux’ woman,” el-Abri said quietly. He watched the gravediggers work. “But I notice he does not look at her for a last time.”
“He’s the one who killed her,” Durell said.
Yes, we heard the shot. We were searching the area for you. Why did he shoot her?”
“Because in the end she chose my side.”
“You speak of her as if she was your friend.”
hell” think she was, Durell said. “But I couldn’t save He turned away, a flat emptiness in him. There was something he wanted to do, but he could not think what it was. Perhaps he was too tired, too filled with pain. He thought he owed something to Madeleine, and he looked at Charley, searching for it.
Assignment Madeleine Page 17