Assignment Star Stealers

by Edward S. Aarons

  "Not exactly."

  Her green eyes turned cold, filled with angry power. She got up and walked naked across the carpet and spoke in a flat voice over her shoulder. "Excuse me, darling, I'm suddenly quite hungry. Will you buy my dinner?"

  "Amanda—"

  "Don't say anything more, just now. I think you've said quite enough, Sam Durell."

  There were round tables under flapping umbrellas on the terrace, overlooking the aquamarine pool and the beach. There were carefully trimmed shrubs, a discreet bar, a polished tUe floor, flowers on every table, and gleaming glass and flatware beside Meissen service plates. The Arab waiters wore ornate desert costumes and carried the traditional, elaborately decorated daggers in their belts. The barman wore a white mess jacket. There was a precious young man with wavy blond hair and an elderly woman bedecked with jewelry at the bar. Amanda came down in a silk suit of lime green that matched her long, exquisite eyes. She smiled with that familiar, humorless stretching of her soft mouth; her manner was impersonal as she tucked her hand in Durell's arm.

  Only half the tables were occupied. The terrace shrubs were set in huge pottery tubs that screened some of the tables and gave a sense of privacy to selected areas. The waiter came and said, "Madame. M'sieu," and gestured for them to precede him. As they rounded one of the potted shrubs they came upon tw^o diners who had been hidden before.

  One was Colonel Cesar Skoll. The other was a roly-poly Buddhalike Chinese in a white cotton suit. On the table was a bottle of vodka and the remains of their meal.

  "Ah, Comrade Cajun! How good we meet again!"

  Skoll's voice boomed over the hushed elegance of the dining terrace. His round, peasant's face was sunburned and peeling, as if he had been out in the sun too long. "Permit me, American. Do you know my friend here?"

  "I've seen his photo on a dossier," Durell said.

  "Mr. Chu Li from Peking. Is it not nice we all meet again!" SkoU was trying to be effervescent. "All of us professionals, eh? Except the gracious lady. Madame Amanda Coppitt, is it not?"

  Skoll took Amanda's hand and bowed over it in a non-Socialist greeting. "You are beautiful, madame. One could almost forgive you for being such a wealthy, imperialistic, capitalistic exploiter of the working masses." He laughed uproariously and pointed a thick, stubby finger at Durell's chest. "Boom, boom, American."

  "You'll do that once too often," Durell said.

  Chu Li, chief of Peking's West Europe division for the dreaded Black House, bowed. He looked quite benign. "Join us, please. Comrade Skoll and I were discussing a little—ah—a deal. We will postpone our business talk for the pleasure of the lady's company."

  Amanda said quietly, "Mr. Durell and I have our own affairs to discuss, gentlemen. I am very sorry . . ."

  "Ah, yes, your affairs," Skoll bellowed, and laughed again. "Forgive me, I have no manners. I am one of the common people." He tapped Durell's chest again. "Perhaps later, we three—you and I and Comrade Chu—can make it a triumvirate, eh? We have business together, all of us."

  "Perhaps," Durell said.

  Over their after-dinner drinks Amanda regarded Durell with thoughtful jade eyes. Chu Li and Skoll left the terrace restaurant. Durell watched them walk out of sight around the swimming pool. Skoll had his sausage fingers closed around the Chinese man's biceps and was talking earnestly, his nearly bald head close to the thick mop of black hair owned by Chu Li.

  Amanda said, "Friends of yours, in your business?" "Their business here is the same as mine. They're looking for Richard. They'd like to take him home with them."

  "Home?"

  "To Peking or Moscow, whichever can persuade him., And if he refuses to go, they'll kiU him."

  "Surely you're joking?"

  "No."

  "Sam, I'm sorry I—well, I don't want to quarrel with you. I don't know what's wrong with me. One moment I want to weep, the next I feel hke singing, filled with the thought of you. Am I being stupid and foolish?"

  "Have you heard from Richard yet?"

  "Yes. I've brought the files that Steve got from New York. I thought I'd have a message from Steve, too, but I haven't. I'd like to deliver the papers to Richard and get out of it, Sam. I wish you were out of it, too. It's all exciting and frightening, and perhaps I'm not as ready to return to the world as I thought I was earlier."

  "When do you meet Richard?" he asked quietly.

  "Tonight. He telephoned half an hour after I arrived here yesterday. He gave me full directions." She paused. "He mentioned you, too. I don't imderstand it.'*

  He waited.

  She said, "You're to come with me and bring the attache case. Whatever that means."

  21

  The clerk, Armand, smiled, twitched his moustache, and xmlocked the hotel safe with a flourish. It was after eleven, and the lobby was empty. There was no sign of Skoll. Amanda waited outside in the dark blue Mercedes.

  "There is a cablegram for you, m'sieu, and a package, flown in by plane from Casablanca."

  "Thank you."

  Durell took the attach6 case and fastened the chain and lock to his wrist. Armand's moustache stopped twitching.

  "You are a diplomat, sir?''

  "I try to be.'*

  Durell opened the cablegram. It was from McFee in Zurich. It read, "Lab came up with gimmick sending on. Direction locator 100 miles."

  The package was a one-foot cube, taped, sealed, and weighing about ten pounds. Durell took it up to his room in the elevator. He burned the cable, flushed the ash down the toilet, and placed the package gingerly on the amoeba-shaped coffee table. It did not tick or rattle. He slit the paper with a knife, breaking two of the seals, and probed very carefully. He was sweatmg suddenly, although the night wind off the Atlantic was cool. Somewhere in the dark shrubbery a woman laughed. He could hear the threatening sound of the surf on the dark and distant beaches.

  The paper came off, disclosing a sealed carton. There were no fine wires, no clicks, no switches. He sighed and dried his hands on a handkerchief and used the knife to slit the side of the carton. Down in the driveway, Amanda would be getting impatient, he thought.

  To hell with it.

  There was a red seal over the top flap. He cut around it, moved the knife point a millimeter at a time, then lifted the seal free. No wires were attached to it. Inside the carton was a black metal box. It was legitimate. There was a telescoping antenna, dials, a pocket for batteries. Made in U.S.A. There was a typed list of instructions for the direction-finding loop antenna. Everything had been perfectly miniaturized. The instruction list was signed by Abe Freeman, the mop-haired specialist in the basement-dungeon labs of K Section's headquarters in Washington.

  Ehirell sighed and stopped sweating.

  He put the black box on a shelf in one of the closets and went down to join Amanda.

  22

  "Drive around to the back at the tennis courts, and go up to your room," he said.

  Amanda wore a flowered silk scarf over her red hair. '*But we're suppose to meet Richard at 12:30 tonight—"

  "Just do as I say. We'll go up to your room."

  "What is it, Sam? Cops and robbers?"

  "Something like that."

  In the suite she leaned back against the closed door. "Richard will be very angry if we're late, I think."

  "At least he'll be safe."

  "And you're worried about that? But who—oh, you mean that loud Russian, and that charming Chinese?"

  "Right."

  He turned on all the lights, drew the curtains, and told Amanda to make a drink for him. She kept eyeing the case attached to his wrist. After a few minutes, he switched off the living room lamps and took Amanda into the bedroom, where her silhouette was thrown on the draperies. He took her in his arms and kissed her.

  "Sam, I don't think—"

  He turned out all the lights. "Now we can go."

  "Do you think it will fool them, if they plan to follow us?"

  "I doubt it," he admitted.

  He did the
driving. Amanda sat beside him with a light sweater around her shoulders. Low over the ocean, there was a quarter moon, with a reddish cast to it. In a few moments they were on the airport road to Inezgane. He wondered if SkoU had planted a direction transmitter in Amanda's Mercedes, but it would have to be risked.

  Beyond the beaches and the orange groves, Amanda sat forward to watch the road. There was no trajffic. In a field to their left were three black tents and a couple of tethered camels. A campfire flickered redly over there.

  "That's the signal," she said. "We turn a little farther on. We have to drive inland for a bit."

  The road was hard-topped, twisting uphill from the sea through wooded groves of cork and arborvitae trees, with a small farm lying here and there under the glow of the moon. Durell checked the mirror, but could not see if they were being followed. Amanda guided him into a smaller road to the right, and dust lifted behind them. They crossed the Oued Sous, little more than a trickle at this time of the year, and then followed the piste going southeast toward Ait Baha and Afraoute, south of P-32. The Mercedes took the bumpy road without much complaint. The countryside changed, the farms were left behind, and there were only low hills and the more distant loom of the Anti Atlas range.

  "Here. Turn here," Amanda said.

  She looked eager and taut, as if she were enjoying a childhood game. By the time they again crossed P-8, the coastal road to Tiznit and Goulimine beyond the Spanish enclave of Ifni, they had been driving almost an hour, and it was past midnight.

  "You're sure you have the directions right?"

  *'Yes. Here we are."

  They were nowhere, as far as he could see. The road ended in a clump of pines that whispered and shushed each other in the sea wind. About five hundred yards beyond a field of tall grass was the edge of the sea cliflf, and when Durell cut the ignition the sound of breakers fiJled the night. The quarter moon lay on its back over the horizon of the sea.

  No one had followed them to this desolate spot.

  Then he saw the black tent, the canvas arched with the pressure of the wind, and the brief flicker of a light. A Jeep was parked by the tent, under a solitary tree that offered bent limbs in supplication to the sky.

  "It's Richard," said Amanda.

  "Let's hope so."

  "I'm glad to be doing this, for Hannibal's sake."

  Durell left the car, the money case heavy on his wrist. His gun was in his belt. Amanda started quickly to the tent, but he held her back. "Stay beside mc."

  "Is there any danger?"

  "Remember, the last time we went into the desert wc had to walk back."

  She laughed. "I thought I might die, and instead, you brought me back to life again."

  A tall, slender man came out of the tent and walked toward them. He wore a Taureg's costume, but he was not a Blue Man. He paused a short distance away and his voice sounded thin and reedy.

  "Durell? Amanda?" He paused. "You have the money, Durell? The papers, Amanda?"

  They both answered, "Yes," together.

  "Don't try any tricks, Durell. Put down the attach^ case and walk back a bit."

  "I can't. You have the key," Durell said.

  There was a silence. "That's right. Very well. Here, catch it."

  There was a flicker of metal as the key was tossed. DureU unlocked the bracelet and put the attache case down on a patch of sandy grass. The wind made the nearby pines hiss. Other shapes were suddenly apparent, moving from behind the black Taureg tent, four of them, each armed with the familiar automatic rifle. They did not come forward, but watched with their weapons raised and ready.

  "I want your data, for the money," Durell said.

  Amanda spoke thinly. "Richard, we also want you to come home. Nothing will be held against you, I promise. Whatever you've done will be forgotten. Steve has spoken to important people in Washington. You'll be granted amnesty. For your father's sake, don't play the traitor any more."

  The young man's head came up, gaunt and strained in the moonlight. "You know nothing about it, Amanda."

  "Perhaps not, but I know just enough to realize you're in desperate trouble, and I can give you help."

  "Bitch," he said. "You and that slippery, smooth Stephenson. I always hated him. You and he—"

  "It's not that way."

  "Whore," he said.

  She stepped back as if she had been slapped. Durell checked her, and she moved near to him. Richard Coppitt was opening the attache case; he had trouble with the lock for a moment.

  "I want your data," Durell said harshly. "I want what I'm paying for." He ignored Richard's quick sneer. "I'll second Amanda's appeal to you. If you don't buy it, I can't promise to keep you aUve."

  "Nothing can happen to me!"

  Durell spoke flatly. "You'll either be killed, or taken to Moscow or Peking.'^

  The lock clicked open. Richard knelt and stared at the contents of the case for a long, long moment. The sea chewed angrily at the base of the cliff. They were not far from the edge, where it dropped into the black sea. Richard lifted his head. Even through his white-faced fury, he looked young and naive. His breath hissed.

  "You can't be that stupid, Durell."

  "What is it?"

  "You must be joking."

  Durell pushed Amanda backward and started forward. Richard Coppitt straightened and made a slight gesture toward the Tauregs by the tent. They came on, their guns lifted. Richard began to laugh, then he choked it off.

  "Why do you want me to kill you?" he cried, his voice aggrieved. "Why didn't you bring the money?"

  "What are you talking about?"

  "Wasn't what happened to Dodd enough for you?" Richard shouted. "Look!"

  He dipped both hands into the case and flung a handful of paper toward Durell. The small sheets fluttered in the sea wind that blew over the cUff. Durell caught one in midair and turned it so that the moonlight shone on it.

  It was not United States currency. Not part of a million.

  Stuffed inside the attache case were hundreds of propaganda leaflets printed in Arabic, the usual hate sheets drooling filth about the United States, imperialism, and the capitalistic West.

  He heard Amanda move behind him. "Oh, poor Sam," she said. "You are a fool." Then something hit him on the back of his head—her handbag, he thought dimly, weighted as if it were full of bricks. The moon spun into the ocean, the sky reeled, there was a scream in his ears, and he went out.

  23

  Amanda was crying.

  "Sam, I had to!"

  She touched his face with trembling fingers.

  "They'd have killed you, darling. I had to do it."

  He lay with his head back against the smooth, fine leather of the Mercedes' front seat. Amanda was driving. Her long hair flew in the wind. There was a roaring like the ocean's surf in his ears, and a blinding pain hammered behind his eyes.

  "It was you who hit me?"

  "I pretended to be on Richard's side."

  "Where are we going?"

  "Back to the hotel."

  "The time?"

  "It's past two in the morning. They were going to throw you over the cliflf, into the sea!"

  "I told you, we aren't playing games."

  "Sam—"

  "Stop crying."

  "I can't help it. I didn't know what to do. I thought if I could convince Richard—he and those Blue Men were ready to kill you. He told them to!"

  "Did he take the data Stephenson gave you?"

  "Oh, yes. Were you really paying him a million dollars? A milUon?"

  "Taxpayers' money. Uncle Sam's."

  "But what happened to it?"

  "I wish I knew," he said.

  They went through Inezgane and swung through Agadir and up the hillside opposite Founti and into the driveway of the Auberge de la Plage. A few colored spotlights were still shining beside the pool. Another light shone inside at the desk. Durell got out of the car, careful not to move too suddenly. He felt as if he had the original hangover of them
all.

  The lobby was empty. No one was behind the desk. In the center.of the lobby was a small, stone-wall garden filled with exotic plants. Water splashed there, and some colored lights tarnished the natural richness of the flowers. He felt as if he were dragging his feet through quicksand.

  "Go up to your room," he told Amanda. "I have a little something more to do."

  "You're in no condition to do anything, and I'm not leaving you tonight for a minute," she said.

  He managed a grin. "Not anything at all?"

  She pinked slightly. "Please, Sam. You look awful. You've been beaten and—"

  "Shot at, stabbed at, chased, watched, lied to, slugged on the head, kicked in the face. You name it. Somebody wants very much to stand over my grave."

  She shuddered. "Don't talk like that."

  "Wait here, then."

  He walked to the empty desk and tapped a bell. Finally a sleepy-eyed man in a red tarboosh came out from an inner sanctum and tapped his lower lip with a thumbnail.

  "I want to see Armand," Durell demanded.

  "Sir?"

  "Armand. Your other desk clerk."

  "He is not here now, sir."

  Durell looked at the wall safe for guests' valuables. "Who can open that box?"

  "Only Armand and the manager. I am not permitted during the night hours, sir. If it is urgent, I shall call the manager—''

  'Td rather you called Armand."

  "But that is impossible, sir. He has gone to visit his sick grandmother."

  Durell stared. "And where does she live? In Casablanca?"

  "Yes, sir. You guessed it exactly." The clerk was more alert now. "Would you like me to call a doctor for you, sir? You look—ah—have you had an accident?"

  "No accident," Durell said. "And never mind the doctor." He turned to Amanda. "Let's go."

  In her bathroom, he splashed cold water on his face, then soaked his head in the sink. The water stung the bruises on his scalp. He took four aspirin and two fingers; of bourbon in an eight-ounce glass while Amanda filled a hot tub for him. She was unbuttoning his shirt for him. when he checked her.

  "The clerk, Armand, was in on it. Why not? They have money enough—our money—to buy anyone with a bit of larceny in his soul. The money was swiped while it was in the safe. We'll never see Armand again, but—" He turned to the telephone and woke up the desk clerk again. "I' want to know the number of Colonel Skoll's room, please."