Assignment Maltese Maiden

by Edward S. Aarons

“She is here now, sir. The signorina is in a friend’s villa across the bay.” Fuad affected an English mannerism. “Very posh, effendi, very exclusive area. Many government people, embassies, that sort of thing. Shall I bring her to you?”

  “Not directly,” Durell said. “Tell her where I am. Can you somehow communicate with the signorina?”

  “I have friends among the servants there.”

  “Good. Get a message to her that an American must see her urgently about her father.”

  “Her father, effendi?”

  “It’s very urgent. She may not be entirely free, do you understand? She must be helped, if she needs help, to get here.” Durell gave Fuad the name of his hotel and hoped the man had not been seduced or frightened away from K Section work by the zeal of the new government. “It must be soon. I can’t stay here more than two hours.”

  “I understand, sir. It will be done at once.”

  Waiting was part of the business. Durell shut the wooden window slats more tightly against the blinding glare of the sun, unlocked the corridor door, and lay back on the bed. He put the gun on the bed beside him under the grayish sheet, with his fingertips touching the trigger. The shadows in the room were hot and deep. You hurried and you waited, as in the army. He thought of Damon and Mills, dead on a hostile shore, and reviewed what they had carried and decided there was nothing that could identify them. He hated to have left them where they fell; but maybe the Russians, freed from the Bertollini villa, would bury them. He doubted it. Durell regretted their deaths but did not mourn them. He lived with danger daily, awake or asleep. It was part of the business. He tried to relax now, knowing that something would happen soon, and he hoped it would come before Keefe and Perozzo returned, because they might intimidate whomever came to nibble at the bait. He himself was the bait, and he hoped the right hunter would show up. He hoped it wouldn’t be Madame Hung.

  He occupied his thoughts with images of Deirdre, now in Malta, across the sparkling sea. Only an hour by plane from here. It had been good to be together in Rome. Their times with each other were always too brief. He felt a sudden ache for her that made him move restlessly on the bed; he did not want to admit that he was lonely for her.

  The noise in the souk below the window had softened in the midday heat. Sweat soaked the barracan he wore. Two men, speaking Arabic interspersed with Italian phrases, walked past the corridor door, arguing. He heard the shrill invective of Cairo’s radio, commanding still another holy war against the Israelis. He listened to the wail of music aimed at the Beduwi of the remote Fezzan. His headache was gone. And someone touched the lever handle of the door.

  He did not move. He heard nothing. He watched the handle go down again. The door opened about two inches, then suddenly opened all the way, and the girl came in quickly, shut the door behind her, and stood for a moment looking at him in the deep shadows of the room.

  She had a small .32 Beretta of Italian war vintage in her hand. She looked competent, but there was not much else he could make out, because she wore a white-and-blue-striped barracan that hooded her dark hair and most of her face.

  “Relax, Anna-Marie,” he said quietly.

  He sat up on the bed, his hand still on his gun under the sheet, and she spoke in a thin voice, accented with Italian. “Do not move, please. Who are you?”

  “My name is Durell. Sam Durell. It doesn’t mean anything to you. But I work for Dickinson McFee.”

  She stood very still. Her hand holding the Beretta did not tremble. She was competent, he thought. She had probably enjoyed the best of Italian and Libyan life; she could probably swim and sail and fly a plane and skin dive and drive racing cars—and make love like a cat. Through the closed wooden jalousies came the wail of the radio nearby. The girl came two steps across the blue-tiled floor; she was still partly blinded by the transition from the glare outside to the dim shadows in here. He could have taken her easily. Instead, he smiled and said, “May I sit all the way up, please?”

  “Be careful.”

  “Are you good with that gun?”

  “I have marksmen’s medals for handguns and rifles.”

  “I thought so. And you sail, swim, scuba-dive? Can you fly a plane?”

  She looked puzzled and spoke in good colloquial English. “Listen, I want to know what this is all about. I was kind of an unwilling guest of—of some friends. They insisted I stay with them. I had the feeling that if I didn’t, I’d be in trouble. But a servant suddenly let me out and told me to come here for help. You’re American, right?”

  “That’s true.”

  “How do you know about me, anyway?”

  “I don’t know too much. I want to know more. But you’re safe with me. I’m on your side, Anna-Marie.”

  “Nobody’s on my side,” she said tightly. “You can sit up, but be careful. What was all that about my father?”

  “I’m looking for Dickinson McFee.”

  “I asked about my father.”

  “One and the same, right?”

  She pushed back the hood of her barracan. Under the Libyan robe, she wore a modern blouse and brief skirt. She had good breasts, good legs, a narrow waist. Her face was small, even elfin, and her eyes were enormous, wide and black, with tension moving in their depths. She regarded him speculatively. “You look like a bandido to me. I met some once in Acapulco. I was there on a holiday. They tried to kidnap me.”

  “I’ll bet they regretted it.”

  “Yes, they did.” She dismissed it with a wave of her left hand. “Listen, I don’t know you or why you’re interested in me, but you can’t help me. I’ve got problems of my own, but I can handle them. You’ll only make things more difficult if you interfere. Thanks for your offer to help, but get out of it, do you understand?”

  “I can’t,” Durell said. “It’s my job.”

  “I think I know who and what you are, and I don’t want any part of you,” the girl said. “Thank you just the same.” Durell said, “Madame Hung has your boyfriend, hasn’t she?”

  She was surprised at last. Again,, he could have disarmed her easily. She stared at him and bit her lip. He asked, “Anna-Marie, have you seen your father?”

  “I don’t have a father.”

  “I’m talking about General Dickinson McFee.”

  “I don’t know him.”

  “You wrote to him. You had something urgent for him, and you lured him here from Washington. Don’t lie to me. I have photos of you and lots of data, when you add it up. I’ve seen the letter you wrote.”

  “No, you didn’t. He destroyed it.”

  “Oh,” Durell said.

  She was angry with herself for a moment. Then she laughed. She had a good voice, and she laughed quietly, but not with too much humor. Her enormous eyes lost some of their implicit tension. “Look, I admit nothing. I don’t know why you’re interfering in my life. But you have no chance. If you bother me, I’ll turn you over to Quafi-di’s police. You know what that will mean—a firing squad or Al Farish prison, that hell-hole. So stay away from me. Push off. Go back to where you came from.”

  “You’re afraid,” he said.

  “I’m not afraid of anything,” she snapped.

  He believed her. “Not for yourself. For young Mr. Lee. Hung will kill him if you don’t cooperate, won’t she?”

  “Goodbye,” she said.

  “Anna-Marie, don’t—”

  “I’ll kill you if you bother me again,” she said.

  She went for the door. Durell went for her gun.

  She was good. She knew hapkido, a barefoot form of Korean karate. But her voluminous robe hampered her, and Durell got a hand on the Beretta, twisted, felt surprise at her lithe strength, twisted again, and sent the gun clattering to the tiled floor. She tried to knee him and slipped out of her sandals to use her bare foot in the lethal techniques of hapkido, and got him in the thigh first, half paralyzing his leg, and then came at him with small white teeth flashing. He did not want to make too much noise in the hotel roo
m. He caught her arm and threw her without ceremony toward the bed. She came down on it with legs flexed and leaped back towards him, feet first. She seemed to enjoy it, but there was desperation in her small, elfin face. The blow could have torn his head off if he’d been there to take it. But she missed when Durell ducked, and he let her land without ceremony on the hard floor. The thump sounded painful. Turning, he shoved her head back and she kicked him again, this time in the stomach, and rolled like a small cat out of his reach. She came up, panting.

  “You bastard.”

  “I’m your friend, Anna-Marie,” he said gently.

  “I have no friends. Only Lee.”

  “You’d do anything for him, right?”

  “To hell with you.”

  She tried to escape for the door again. He blocked her, threw her once more toward the bed, and this time he followed her as she bounced and pinned her under him, not saving anything this time, knowing she would maim, cripple, or kill him if she could. She felt his gun under the sheet beneath her and tried for it, and he pinned her arm against the iron posts of the bed, wrenched it against the unrelenting metal, and pulled hard. She should have shrieked with pain, but although her face went white and her breath hissed, she made no other sound. Beads of sweat covered her face.

  “Some friend,” she gasped.

  “Had enough?”

  “You win.”

  He snaked a hand under her and retrieved his revolver. Her big black eyes were fixed on his face.

  “Really enough?” he asked quietly.

  “Don’t trust me,” she said. “My arm is breaking.”

  “I know. I don’t want to do it.”

  “All right. Enough. You’re big and heavy, and it’s hot.” He let go of her. She lay there for a moment, not even freeing her arm from the iron bars of the bed; her huge eyes remained calm, studying him as he moved out of range of her lethal feet. Then she carefully extricated her arm and sat up on the bed, rubbing herself ruefully.

  “You are a cruel man,” she whispered.

  “You came here to talk. You didn’t slip away from wherever you were just to warn me,” Durell said. “You know that sort of thing won’t work. I’m not about to turn tail and stop looking for McFee just because you say so—or because your young Chinese friend is in danger. So we’ll talk. Would you like a drink?”

  She shook her head. “No.”

  “Cigarette?”

  “1 don’t smoke.”

  “Will you talk now?”

  She got up and walked to the window and looked down through the wooden slats at the souk. Durell heard a camel bray. The clanging of the coppersmith had stopped. He smelled fresh-baked Arab bread. There seemed to be more cycle and truck traffic from the bigger artery beyond the gate of the Medina el Kadima. Someone walked past the hotel room door, the feet shuffling slowly, as if the man’s shoes pinched. Durell waited until the footsteps faded away. “Well?” he asked.

  The girl kept her back to him. Her black hair was tied in two braids and kept in place with pink wool ribbons, like an American college girl of past years. Her shoulders were square and defiant, as if she were accustomed to facing an always-hostile world she had not made and did not comprehend. When she turned, he saw tears shimmering in her big dark eyes.

  “I don’t know what to do,” she whispered.

  “Start from the beginning. With the truth.”

  “I really don’t know what the truth is.”

  “Tell it as you see it,” he said.

  She rubbed her arm. “You really hurt me.”

  “I meant to,” he said.

  “It starts with Lee, you know.”

  “Father or son?”

  “Mr. Lee’s son. I love him. He loves me.”

  “How did you meet?”

  “He was sent to find me, because of my father, because of my father’s position in American Intelligence.”

  “You’re talking about McFee?”

  “Yes.”

  “He’s truly your father?”

  She made a small grimace. “Without benefit of clergy. He sired me, just the same.”

  “This young Chinese, Lee—he searched you out to ask you about McFee?”

  She sighed. “Wheels within wheels. His father, the senior Liu Tze Lee, lives in Hong Kong, a millionaire merchant who somehow began to work for this Madame Hung. That is, he was forced into it by some indiscretion he committed long ago. I don’t know what it was. Maybe it was just the chance for enormous profit that Hung dangled as bait for him. Anyway, he fell into the trap and did free-lance intelligence work for Hung’s outfit. Once caught in the trap, young Lee was forced to work for Hung, too.” She paused. “Can you understand that?”

  “Easily,” Durell said.

  “So Lee was sent to find me. And he did. We didn’t— we didn’t fall in love right away. It was smooth and easy and loose—our relationship, I mean. It took a few weeks for Lee to work up to his real goal. But then we—we were intimate.” Her enormous eyes were clear again, but her small, square shoulders were still rigid with challenge. “He told me to write, this letter to my father—to McFee—to tempt him to come to my house either in Malta or here in Libya. But at the last moment,. Lee changed everything. He wanted to get away from Hung, even if it meant disaster for his father. It was a big decision for him. You know how Chinese families are, and he adores and respects his father tremendously. But he was willing to do this, to get out from under Hung’s thumb, for me.”

  “Do you believe it?”

  “I do,” she said simply.

  “Lee offered to defect to the West? And give us details of Hung’s organization?”

  “Everything he knows,” she said.

  “So you and Lee wrote that letter to McFee, promising that Lee would come over the fence if McFee came and got him? You didn’t think it was a trap set for McFee?”

  “I don’t think it was.”

  “What about the Pilgrim Project papers?”

  She frowned. “I don’t know anything about that. What project is that?”

  “You’re lying to me again.”

  “No, I’m not! But it’s all so confusing. Somehow, Madame Hung got wind of Lee’s intention to defect, and she showed up at the villa with several gunmen. We were kept prisoners there for some days, waiting to see if McFee would show up.”

  “And did he?”

  “There was never any reply, no hint that he’d even gotten our letter. Believe me, I still haven’t seen him.” The girl shivered, although the room was hot, and her face looked pale in the shadowy gloom. “I know it sounds complicated—Lee and his father working for Hung, and Lee getting involved with me. I wish—I wish I’d never been born. It’s all a horrible nightmare that came into my life when I was reasonably happy, independent, having a good time—”

  “Take it easy,” Durell said.

  “I can’t. I’m scared to death.”

  “Why did Hung take you and Lee here to Tripoli?”

  “The Russians showed up. I’m not sure what made her move, except for that. She got wind of some colonel—a Russian KGB man named Skoll, who was nearby. She wanted to stay out of his sight for a time. She said she might make a deal with him later, once McFee came on. So we all pulled out of the villa one night and drove to Tripoli. Two days ago, that was. And now you’re in it.” She shook her head. “All my life, I told myself never to give up on anything. And I never did. It wasn’t easy, living with the old Contessa. She was my grandmother. She was eccentric, and she loved to remind me that my mother gave birth to an illegitimate child—me. I made myself ignore all that. I was alive, and that was enough for me. I got along fine with the world until I fell in love with Lee.”

  She paused. “I’m afraid of Madame Hung. Not for myself, but for Lee. You can’t imagine what devilish sort of person she is.”

  “I’ve met her before,” Durell said.

  Her eyes widened. “You know her? You—?”

  “We have some old scores to settle.”<
br />
  “Oh, I wish I could believe you!”

  “You can,” he said gently. He thought about what she had told him. He didn’t accept all of it, but some of it made a certain amount of sense. The Q alarm that had brought him here without restrictions could have stemmed from McFee’s attempt to get enough data singlehandedly on Hung’s organization so as to finish the woman, once and for all. But it didn’t quite fit McFee’s pattern. The general was not a quixotic type. There had to be more to it. Dickinson McFee had vanished at Rome’s Da Vinci airport, and since then, no one had seen either the general or the Pilgrim Project data he’d been carrying to US naval commanders. Skoll didn’t have him. Neither did Hung, as yet, or she would have been gone from the scene by now. Then where was he? Durell tried to ignore his frustration. The girl was a lovely little creature, and if McFee regarded her as his true daughter, would he be working alone to help her because of emotional bias? He shook his head. He did not know McFee well enough to judge that. No one knew Dickinson McFee that well.

  “What is it?” the girl asked finally.

  “I’ve lost two good men so far, and others have died too. I can’t accept your story as the whole truth, Anna-Marie.”

  “I’ve told you more than I ever intended to.”

  “But not all of it.”

  She rearranged her striped barracan. “I have to get back, you know. I don’t want to, I’m afraid, but Hung has Lee. I must get back before she realizes I’ve slipped away.”

  “Don’t do it,” he said.

  “You must let me go. Please. Lee means everything to me. Hung will kill him if I don’t go back.”

  “She may kill you both anyway,” Durell said.

  Her small face was pale, but her eyes were firm now. “I’ll have to take that chance. Either let me go now, or I’ll scream and bring the police here.”

  Durell looked at her. Her chin was determined. He didn’t doubt that she meant what she said. He turned and went to the hotel room door and opened it.

  “Go ahead,” he said.

  She was momentarily surprised. A small, almost impish smile touched her lips, but did not erase a sadness there. “Is that all there is to it? You’ll let me go?”