Assignment Star Stealers

by Edward S. Aarons

  "What about this Stephenson?" he asked. "You depend on him. It may be, some day. .. ."

  "All I know is that I'm here and I'm cold and scared, and you've come into my life again like a miracle. I think we might die out here, and I don't know what it's all about. I know you won't and can't tell me, but I feel different about everything, suddenly."

  "How, different?'''

  "Sam, I loved you, once."

  "That was a long time ago."

  "Hold me. Please. Hold me tight."

  She slid alongside his body and he felt the soft, fine curves of her hips and thighs and breasts, and she pulled him toward her with a sudden, desperate strength.

  "Please, Sam."

  He took her in his arms and kissed her. Her mouth quaked under his lips. Her long hair blew over his face. She stiffened for a moment as he held her, then suddenly made a quiet whimpering sound, as if she were the embodiment of every lost and lonely woman in the world.

  "Yes, Sam," she said.

  10

  He awoke some hours later to the sense of another presence nearby. Amanda was not at his side. He was not sure what had wakened him. The wind had died down, and he tasted sand in his mind, felt its grittiness between his teeth and in his ears and nostrils. He did not move at all. He opened his eyes just a slit, keeping his breath as regular as if he were still asleep. From what he could judge of the night sky, it was near dawn again. Although there was no wind, he heard a thin suspiration in the strangely shaped rocks that towered overhead at the end of the joum.

  The hard prodding pressure of the .38 in his waistband was reassuring, but he lay partly on his right side and the gun was under him. His right arm was crooked under his head for a pillow; his left arm was outflung on the other side. He did not move a finger at first.

  Listening, he defined the whispered sounds as human voices, and then very slowly, agonizingly, he began to move his left hand toward the gun in his belt. He touched his hip, sighed as if in his sleep, and rolled slightly.

  The sky was blotted out as if by a giant black bat; he heard the flapping of a desert robe and saw the flash of a white, gleaming eye—

  He started up, and the gun butt crashed down on his head. The night sky exploded with a million whirling stars. He fell back over on his right side, a cry bursting in his throat. He kept falling, almost into unconsciousness, and then a boot slammed into his ribs, but he stifled the sound of pain in him and let himself drift, afire with an agony in the left side of his face.

  He heard Amanda scream.

  Don't kill him!

  Be quiet.

  Is he dead?

  No, Not even badly hurt.

  Tell these people —

  No, I'll tell you what to do!

  Richard!

  A wave of pain erased the next few words. Durell was aware of the guardian shadow standing over him. He smelled stale sweat and unwashed desert clothing, and saw the glint of the short-barreled AK-47 rifle in the Taureg's hands. The pain came and went and came back again. He was swimming in its harsh darkness. The ground under his sprawled body lifted and fell, as if he were at sea. He tasted acid in the back of his throat. A warm trickle of blood oozed over the left side of his face.

  His fingers touched the gun in his belt at last, and rested there.

  Amanda was saying, "I did as you asked, Richard, for your father's sake. You and I scarcely ever had a chance to know each other. He loved you, but you turned your back on him."

  "Did you get the files I asked you for?"

  "Yes. Yes, they're in Fez."

  "Why did you come here with this man?"

  "He—he's an old friend."

  "Did he tell you who he really is?"

  "I know he works for the government and that he's been looking for you, that's all."

  There was a harsh laugh, high and thin. "He'd kill me, that man, if he could. He thinks I'm a traitor."

  "And you're not?"

  "Do you consider it incredible that I gave up the apartments, the flunkies, the Long Island house, the flat in Lausanne to live in the desert like this? You are a stupid woman. Just as stupid and blind as my father. AU that money was suffocating me! But now I need some."

  "Then come home with me."

  "I can't. I won't. What I'm doing is important."

  "To whom? To yourself? It's got something to do with our spy satellites, hasn't it? And what are you doing to yourself?"

  "I do what must be done."

  "You're a brilliant young man, Richard—^but not very worldly. Hannibal always said you needed someone to look after you—"

  Durell heard the sharp sound of a brutal slap, a gasp of surprise, a thud as if Amanda had fallen. He had his hand closed on the gim now. He could take one of them, anyway. Sand rolled down against him as Amanda got up and walked to his right side. He could see her now. Her figure was tall against the starlight. The man followed her. His face was carved in black and white in the dim starlight, hooded by a corded Arab headdress. He wore a striped jellaba. Twin triangles of darkness formed his eyes. The lower part of his face was veiled, Hke the

  Taurecs with him. He was tall and slender, and his voice, for all his ancer. was thin and rather high, even petulant. He followed Amanda to the end of the foum, where they were outlined against the paler vista of sand beyond the rocky defile.

  ''Richard, whatever you've done, it can be fixed. Steve can fix anything. You can come home."

  "I'm at home here."

  There was ringing in Durell's head. He clung to the gun in his belt as the only point of sanity in the world. For a time then, he passed out, unable to keep the pain from overwhelming him. But he heard a few more words.

  "Go to Trhan Kadir ... the Medersa Bou Batha . . . We'll use Durell . . . He'll take you there. . . ." There was a high, angry laugh. "We will not tolerate being tricked again. . . ."

  "Richard, are you a murderer?"

  "No. But Durell is."

  11

  She bathed his face and made soft sounds of personal anguish as she cleaned the wound on the side of his head. The water came from the canteens, and he wanted to warn her to be sparing of it, but he gave in to her and let her care for him. He felt as if he had been drunk for days. His left eye worried him. The vision in it dimmed and faded now and then. It was an hour after sunrise, and already the heat was intolerable.

  "They came so suddenly." Amanda was crying. "One minute I was asleep, so sweetly asleep for the first time in so many, many months, and then—there they were. Thank vou, Sam."

  "Did they hurt you in any way?"

  "No, but your poor face—"

  "I'm all right," he said.

  He felt awful. He sat up and watched the light flood j over the sky from the east and felt a trickle of sweat run ■ down the nape of his neck. Amanda watched him with | sorrowing green eyes. Even though she had walked through the desert with him and slept there in a corner ; between the rocks, she looked trim and tidy. She had wound a scarf through her thick red hair and found some lipstick in her big shoulder bag. He touched the trickle of tears on her cheek.

  "Was it really Richard?"

  "Yes. He said they didn't expect me to come with you, and when he heard I was lost out here with you, he came with those men to talk to me."

  "He still wants the ffle?"

  "Oh, yes."

  "I didn't hear all of it. I kept passing out and coming jto, over and over."

  "Poor Sam. But I don't understand Richard at all," Amanda said. "I told you, I never knew him well, but now he—I offered him just about everything Hannibal owned." She smiled wryly. "It's almost a billion dollars. He turned it down." '

  "Naturally," Durell said.

  She regarded him with wide jade eyes. "Do you understand it?"

  "He's fashioning a whole new world for himself, where the money would be valueless," he said.

  He was hungry and thirsty and had the biggest headache he could ever remember. The sky was turning white with heat. He stood up and the dese
rt staggered around him and then steadied on the horizon again. He ' touched the aching side of his face.

  "Poor Sam," Amanda said again.

  He pointed to the helicopter that came up over the edge of the desert.

  Amanda ran out and waved, and Durell looked around for his sunglasses and straightened the loop where a Taureg boot had bent it. The helicopter kicked up a vast cloud of dust and sand as it landed, and the burden of its blades beat back and forth within the walls of the foum. There was an insigne on the mosquito-like fuselage, a blue circle with HCI overlapped in the center of it.

  "It's Steve!" Amanda exclaimed.

  A tall, slender man with pale blond hair came out of the chopper's bubble and ducked under the slowly rotating blades. The pilot remained inside. The tall man straightened and walked carefully toward them.

  "Amanda?"

  She could not suppress her excitement and relief. The blond man put his arm around her shoulders and kissed her cheek, then his eyes touched on Durell.

  "This is Gary Stephenson, Sam."

  He had that air of poise and power that comes to high-pressure corporate executives accustomed to dominating their private worlds—an aura of competence and confidence, certain that the people around him will jump to obey his wishes. There was an elegance about him, in his dark Madison Avenue business suit, in the way he took off his gold-rimmed sunglasses with care and stared at Durell with hostile pale gray eyes under bushy brows.

  "You gave us a bit of a scare, Amanda."

  "Well, I'm all right, now that you're here. I might have known you'd show up, Steve. Just like the cavalry. I can always depend on you, can't I?"

  "Yes, you can, darling. Are you all right?"

  "Oh, yes. But Sam—"

  "Had an accident," said Durell.

  "Yes, I see. Your face looks—it's a nasty bruise. Thank you for taking care of our Amanda. She's rather important to us." Durell was not sure whether Gary Stephenson was using a royal plural, or if he referred to the corporate entity controlled by the Coppitt interests. Stephenson did not offer his hand. "Well, well, Amanda. It's a good thing that note was left for me back at the hotel desk in Fez. I flew in from Zurich early this morning, and when you weren't there—"

  "What note?" Amanda asked.

  "Some Russian fellow left it at the Palais Jamai desk. Said you were driving down here somewhere, and might be in some—ah—difficulties."

  *'Did he sign the message?" Durell asked.

  "Oh, yes. Someone named SkoU. Odd name, even for a Russian. Are you sure you are all right, my dear?"

  "Yes, Steve."

  Stephenson stared at Durell. His gray eyes were still hostile. He put a proprietory arm around the girl and said, "Let's get out of this dismally hot place, darling."

  12

  The neck of the vodka bottle swung and jerked like a rattling machine gun.

  "Boom, boom, American. You're dead."

  "No, I got you first," Durell said.

  He pocketed his S & W .38. Colonel SkoU laughed and showed two steel teeth in his peasant's ruddy face and swung his boots off Durell's bed. The Hotel Raschid was quiet except for the radio in the lane that now spit hate from a Cairo propaganda recording. The muezzins were calling the faithful to prayer through the noonday heat.

  Durell went into the bathroom through the beaded curtain and opened the wooden jalousie slats to let in some sunlight. Down in the alley below chickens clucked and roosters crowed, and a dozen lambs clicked tiny hooves on the cobbles as they were led to the market square. The woven reed awnings over the lane were only partly lowered today. He did not see Amanda's Mercedes-Benz or the high-bodied black Jaguar in its niche.

  "American," said Skoll, foUowing him through the curtain into the bath, "you should see a doctor. You were a little bit careless, yes?"

  "We all make mistakes."

  "Among us, you have a reputation for not making very many. One mistake in our business and it can be fatal, eh?"

  Durell turned on the hot water tap. Nothing came out.

  He tried the cold, and a tepid stream trickled into the stained basin. The mirror was cloudy, but he studied the iridescent bruise high on the left side of his face. It was puflfy and tender, but no facial bones seemed to have been broken. His left eye was bloodshot. He began to wash the broken skin very gently and looked up at SkoU's solid reflection in the mirror behind him.

  "I told you we should be allies," said the Russian. *T act in good faith. I have done you a—how do you say it?—a gratuitous favor. The rich American capitalist lady is safe now?"

  "She sends you her thanks, comrade."

  "Ha ha. In the Soviet world we have some women executives, but they must know their business, so to speak, and not live simply as bloodsuckers on the labor of the workers."

  "What do you want, Skoll?"

  "Ah, you wish to talk business now?"

  "Not really."

  "One of our Cosmos sateUites gave us only blank readings last night. We had hoped for some data on your Alaskan atomic tests. The tapes were wiped clean, however. A great disappointment." Skoll grunted. "I suppose we shall have to buy the information now from these—these amateur thieves. Did you find your man Dodd?"

  "Yes."

  "Dead?"

  "Yes."

  "These Arabs can be savages."

  "They weren't Arabs."

  Durell began to shave, very gingerly. He watched Skoll in the misty, stained mirror. The Russian KGB man was wearing a gray linen jacket and dark slacks, a sweat-stained white shirt with a large striped necktie. Everything seemed a size too small for him. His hair had been cut close to his gleaming, ridged scalp. The small peasant eyes were pale and humorless.

  "Did you buy back your information, Cajun?"

  "I don't know what you're talking about."

  "Yesterday, one of our Italian people, a fellow named Cantelevri, had to pay out half a million rubles for information taken from a Chinese satellite. It was authentic. The damned Chinks had spotted our latest troop movements along the Mongolian border."

  "Then pull your troops away from there."

  "Moscow is getting impatient with me. I admit it. They say I am wasting my time in Fez."

  "I'd say so, too."

  "It may be that I wiU have to come over to your side, American. It might be embarrassing for me to go home, if I achieve no results. I am very worried." Skoll did not look worried. "How would you like it if I came over the wire to your people?"

  "Our embassy in Rabat is only 125 miles from here, Colonel. It's at Number 6 Avenue de Marrakesh. Telephone them. The numbers are 303-61 through -69."

  "You think I am joking?"

  "Yes."

  "You are not grateful for the help I gave you?"

  "I'll put in a good word for you, Skoll."

  The shower in the big stone tub gave out only rusty lukewarm water. Durell stood under the trickle and let his skin absorb the liquid with gratitude. He began to feel a little better. He thought of Amanda and her starved, suddenly eager body in the sands of the Sahara, and he wondered at the tricks that life played on poor humans. He thought of the pompous, arrogant Stephenson, and of the obvious and immediate jealousy exhibited by the man. It made him grin to himself. He hoped he had helped Amanda come out of the tomb in which she had imprisoned herself since Hannibal Coppitt's death.

  Skoll handed him a towel and then lighted a thin, dark cigar. The tobacco smelled vile. He seemed to be able to read Durell's mind.

  "What is your old friend, Mrs. Coppitt, doing here, Cajun American? She is a very sad and lonely widow. You are helping her from this sadness?"

  "You put it correctly. She is sad and lonely."

  Skoll winked at him. "She loves you, yes?"

  "She loves me, no."

  "Her stepson, this world-famous genius, he is a defector, we understand. A pity. A traitor and defector."

  "Don't throw stones in glass houses, Skoll. You lost your own best astronautic-electronic man, too."


  Skoll suddenly sounded dangerous. "It makes me wonder if the United States is simply playing games with us. A smokescreen, so to say. It could be a very unhappy game for you, American."

  "Is that a threat?"

  "We must not quarrel." Skoll's steel teeth gleamed as he bit into his cigar. "We are both harnessed to the same mule."

  "In the same boat, you mean. I'll talk it over with my boss," Durell said.

  "Yes, do that."

  "Have you been trying to kill me, Skoll?"

  "I?" Skoll spread his hands and looked shocked and innocent. "Now why should I ever want to do that?"

  13

  It was raining in Zurich under a low ceiling of gray clouds. Umbrellas bobbed like the backs of a herd of strange animals under the dripping plane trees of the Bahnhofstrasse. The Zurichers hurried with their heads down against the cold wind that came off the lake. Bells rang from the Grossmiinster, perhaps an echo of the muezzins' calls in distant Africa.

  McFee was waiting in a dark wooden booth farthest from the door of the restaurant near the lake. Rain trickled from the diamond-paned window. To the right of the booth was the kitchen entrance; and to the left was the window. A leaden mist blew over the little square that fronted the gray waters of the lake. Lights glimmered from cars on the Alpen Bridge and in the windows of distant oflSce buildings. The water trickling down the window was tinted red and green from the neon signs that advertised beer.

  "Olliver usually runs a tight ship, Samuel."

  "He lives like a caliph out of the Arabian Nights,: Durell returned. He sat facing the window. McFee wore a dark gray raincoat and held his lethal blackthorn walking stick between his knees. He looked unusually tired.

  "Any reason why you were put under surveillance in Morocco by the local people?"

  "I don't know. But I'd like an eye on Olliver. It's not my job. I have other fish to fry," Durell remarked. "Olliver has this broken leg, or so he claims, but he gets about fine. He reminds me of a vulture hunched over a rather disappointing carcass."

  "Now, Samuel."

  "I guess I'm just sorry about Jimmy Dodd, sir."