Assignment Maltese Maiden

by Edward S. Aarons

  “I think she’s on the yacht.” He looked at the girl. “I think Lee’s there, too, with his father.”

  “And Madame Hung?” Perozzo asked.

  Durell pointed downward. McFee had turned back to the door in the tower. The small man walked patiently and obediently inside and vanished. It was almost dark now. The first stars twinkled over the eastern sea.

  Perozzo said sadly, “Good luck, Sam.”

  Chapter 22

  The flat tower roof reached up to fifty feet below the edge of the bluff. The way down was craggy, with crumbling stone ledges and a few scrubby bushes struggling against the sea wind. Durell strapped Perozzo’s knife to his right leg, shoved his gun deep into his waistband, and used his own knife to dig hand-grips for himself. It was not as difficult as it had looked. A sturdy vine dropped him down the first ten feet, and then a fissure gave him foot-locks for another fifteen feet. Halfway. The roof of the tower still seemed an enormous way down. He could make out the dim outlines of a chaise longue, a table, a folded sun umbrella. The lighthouse of Gordon Point some miles to the northwest made a regular sweep of brilliance across the black sky. The house windows were all still dark. In a few more minutes, there would be nothing but utter blackness and perhaps a long fall to his death below.

  He tried moving to his left, but the bluff curved inward, and without a rope, he couldn’t swing it. To the right was a small shrub. He tested his weight on it, swung, found a foothold on another sloping ledge. He faced outward, feeling his way, edging sidewise and downward, one step at a time. Once he dislodged a small stone that spun away into the blackness below. He sweated, listened for it to strike. It made only a small thud on grass far below. He went four more steps and his foot searched through empty air. Nothing. He drew a deep breath and rested. The roof was twenty feet down, ten feet out. Too risky a jump. Once again he turned to face the cliff, then sought for foot-grips below the ledge. He toed one, tried another. It held. He got down another five feet, hanging to the edge of the little saddle he had followed. Then he struck his knife hard into the crumbly face of the bluff, wishing for a rock hammer, although that would have made too much noise. The blade suddenly locked in a tiny crevice. He used the grip to lower himself another three feet.

  He had come as far as he could.

  The stars looked cold in the night sky. The beam of Gordon Point Light flashed overhead, showing the square shape of the tower roof. He didn’t stop to think. If he struck a chair, a table down there, he could break a leg, his back, his neck.

  He jumped.

  For an instant, he thought it was all over. He didn’t think he’d make it. He twisted, gasped, felt the wind buffet him, and he struck, let his body go rubbery, and rolled, thudded against something hard, slapped an arm against soft rubber, and came up, a bit shaken, reaching for his gun.

  He was on the roof. He looked back toward the top of the bluff. He thought he saw Perozzo’s head peering over the edge, but he wasn’t sure. He turned away.

  Someone might have been alerted by the thump of his landing on the roof, but nothing happened. Far away, he heard the cries of the little horned owls of Gozo. He waited until his breathing was normal. As the girl had said, there was a hatchway in the opposite side of the roof. A two-foot wall surrounded the edge, built of rough stones. He looked down over the edge, into the garden. Everything was dark down there. He tried the hatchway. It was locked, as the girl had predicted. For a moment, he didn’t think he’d gotten anywhere at all. He was effectively trapped on top of the high tower.

  Then the hatchway creaked. Instantly he got behind it as the planking was lifted. A man came out, just his head and shoulders visible, and said, “Please, Mr. Durell. Do not shoot.”

  Durell put his gun against the man’s head. He was Chinese, big and wide-shouldered, with thick black hair.

  The man said, “Madame Hung is waiting. Come. You may kill me, but that will do no good. You have been expected.”

  Chapter 23

  “Ah, Mr. Durell,” she said. “You have no military rank, have you? A paid mercenary, on contract to your K Section. Yes, I remember. Cajun is your code name. And of course, we have met before.”

  Her voice was fluid, her English unmarred by any trace of accent. It was said that Madame Hung had taught herself a number of languages from books. The result was a kind of sterility of tone, a lack of certain normal inflections, with no trace of regional origin in the phrases and the wordage she chose.

  “Some tea, Mr. Durell. In a friendly fashion, of course.”'

  “No, thank you.”

  Her carefully modeled eyebrows lifted like dark wings over amused, jet almond eyes. “It is not poisoned, Mr. Durell. Or drugged. You are far too valuable for me to waste you with a mere gesture of revenge. Yes, you offered me great injury in the past. Did you think I had forgotten?”

  “No.”

  “You are not very communicative,” she suggested.

  “You know why I am here.”

  “And you are impatient to get on with your mission? But of course, that is all canceled now.”

  “Not quite,” Durell said.

  She was beautiful in her red Chinese robe, embroidered with heavy gold thread in dragon forms and tiny figures of Mandarin gentlemen and ladies of another epoch in Chinese Empire history. The high collar did not detract from her long throat. Her black hair was carefully coiffed, coiled high upon her fine head, accenting the odd pallor of her oval face, which had been made up with powder until her features looked like a mask, serene, smiling, confident, but h-irdly mobile. It was impossible to guess her age. And yet, Durell thought, nothing could hide the vicious cruelty that emanated from her like a tangible aura. Her smile was a careful gesture, a practiced movement without meaning or depth.

  “Are you comfortable, Mr. Durell? You have had a difficult time. Is your arm satisfactory? You see, I know about Keefe. I should reprove you, but the man was a fool. It is you I want, and I shall have you on my terms, without more delay.”

  “I want to see Dickinson McFee,” he said.

  “So you shall. He is alive, but not particularly happy.” The woman’s careful smile came and went. Cold sweat ran down Durell’s arms and chest and belly. The results of his past meetings with Hung had been bitter and cruel for others as well as himself. She was clever, almost omnipotent; her apparatus might easily rival K Section; her intellect and ruthlessness was unmatched anywhere, even in the Black House of Peking.

  He said, “You know that the KGB and Major Won are also after you?”

  She waved a slim, immaculately manicured hand. “I do not worry about Skoll and Won. They rival each other. You were clever not to ally yourself with them.”

  “They’ll get you, though—if I don’t. This time, you’ve gone too far, trying to manufacture a world crisis for your own personal profit.”

  “But they will pay my price. I do not underestimate them, but I know you well, Durell, and you are worth a dozen of them.” She paused. “You have not asked about Miss Padgett.”

  “I expect you’ll tell me about her when you please.”

  “You do not wonder if she is still alive?”

  “She had better be.”

  “Ah. You threaten me? But you are helpless now. You have put yourself in my hands. It puzzles me.” The stiff, powdered, beautiful face did not change expression, except that the eyebrows lifted like jet wings over unwinking black eyes. “You are brave and intelligent. Why have you done this?”

  “I’m going to destroy you,” Durell said.

  She smiled with care. “You should be pleading for your life, to avoid torture. You know what I can do. Morality does not interest me, or sentimentality. One does what is needed, or one is no more than another grain of sand in the Sahara of the world’s population. What can you do? I have sent my men to collect Perozzo and the little Maltese girl from the cliff. You have no other resources. I shall strip you naked, and make you grovel at my feet. I will enjoy that. But I shah not permit myself the
luxury of gratified emotions when my objectives are more important.”

  “Is Deirdre on Lee’s yacht?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Hung said at once. “Please have some tea.”

  They were alone in the large front room of the stone house. One large window faced the black sea, and he could hear the small surf splash on the pebbly beach. The room was furnished in Mediterranean style, with muted colors, some cane chairs, a long oval table. Madame Hung sat in a Bombay chair, her long hands resting on her thighs. She looked like a theatrical puppet, stiff and formal, exerting not the slightest bit of unnecessary energy. He knew of her enormous wealth. It was probably incalculable; her interests were scattered ah over the world. Like Medusa, he thought, with snakes in her hair. But she was never satisfied. She enjoyed power too much ever to halt her operations. The world would be safer with her death. He wished for this and knew the wishing was dangerous. He had run out of cards. He was playing poker with an empty hand. His only hope was that she could not truly know it.

  A burly man with a shaven head came in, took the tea things away without looking at Durell, and vanished.

  Durell said, “Madame Hung, everything is against you this time. You gambled on luring McFee here because of his daughter and getting the Pilgrim Project papers as well as McFee himself, to stir up trouble in the world. All of which would make your price higher than ever. How much are you asking?”

  “One hundred million dollars,” she said. “Or the equivalent in rubles. And the same amount from Peking.”

  “From Washington, Moscow and Peking? You’re selling the same information to all three?”

  “Yes.”

  “But they know that now. That price is only valid if your data is exclusive.”

  “They do not know it for certain. I shall bargain in such a way that they will never be sure of this. Skoll and Major Won are fools.” She dismissed them with a small gesture of her fingers. “I do not fear them. But it would be better if I had you on my side.”

  Durell laughed quietly. “Megalomania, Madame Hung?”

  “I am a realist. You will sell yourself to me, or you and your lovely young lady will surely die.”

  “Our lives are not important,” Durell said.

  “Money, then,” said Madame Hung. She leaned forward in her chair, and the heavy brocade of her Chinese gown made a small metallic sound. “Sir, I respect you. I have even feared you. What is the greatest gift I can give you? Do not say it is freedom, and do not waste my time with platitudes of patriotism. It is a new world we face, one in which its problems will demand a centralized world hegemony. I am a realist, and so are you. So there is only one reward left. Power. Power in the world now and in the world of tomorrow. I offer this to you.”

  “You don’t have it to give,” Durell returned. “You’re in a corner, pressed by the KGB and the Black House, who finally realize how you’ve betrayed them. You can add K Section to those who are closing in on you. There is no way out for you. Give me McFee and Deirdre—and the Lees, too—and we’ll bargain.”

  She reacted with a suppressed violence that charged the air with electric danger. For a moment, he thought he’d gone too far. He was sure she had enough armed men nearby to overpower him if he took just one step toward her. The woman trembled and half-started up from her throne-like chair. The mask of her face threatened to crack. Her black eyes were venomous. Then she sank back again, half-smiling, her eyes hooded.

  “Yes, you are stubborn. But you shall see the alternative. You saw McFee in the garden. Come, see him again.”

  She stood up. As if on signal, two big young Chinese came into the room, armed with automatic machine-pistols.

  Hung said, “Signorina Bertollini restored this old tower-fortress very cleverly—even to the underground dungeon. You shall see your General McFee, to whom you are foolishly devoted.”

  “He hasn’t talked yet, has he?”

  “But he shall. Oh, yes, he shall.”

  The two burly Chinese pushed him out the door, toward the ground floor of the square tower. Hung spoke thinly to the two men, who nodded like automatons, then she left through another door. One of the men lifted a hatch in the stone floor and a bright glare of light came up in an explosive shaft of brilliance from the cellar room below. Durell looked down a flight of steep stone steps into the glare.

  Perhaps through a whim, Anna-Marie had restored the prison shackles and stone bench and open fireplace, even with medieval torture implements and chains, hung upon the walls. McFee sat on the stone bench, his back rigid. His face was immobile, his eyes stared at nothing. There was a bruise on his left cheek, and blood clotted the back of his gray hair. Without animation, he looked like a puppet. He was shackled with chains to the bench. Only the fact that he breathed lightly and rapidly gave Durell a hint that he was alive.

  “Drugged?” he asked.

  One of the Chinese said, “He has been given one of Madame Hung’s hypno-anesthesias.”

  “And you’ve questioned him?”

  “Only briefly.”

  “Has he given you much?”

  “He is a tough little man. We believe he had access to some counter-drug that has helped him keep silent.”

  “May I speak to him?”

  The Chinese laughed. “Go ahead.”

  Durell went down the narrow steps and crossed toward the bench. For a moment he felt that this was not McFee at all. The face was carved in pale flesh without muscle-tone so that the jaw sagged and the eyelids drooped without nerve control. With the eyes, there was nothing at all. “General?” Durell said quietly. “Do you know me?” There was no flicker of response.

  “I’m here about Pilgrim Project,” Durell said.

  Nothing changed.

  “And Anna-Marie.”

  Nothing.

  Behind the staring, sagging eyes, Durell thought, was easily enough intelligence information to make this halfdead creature the target of every agency in every country of the world. If that brain could be made to function, there was a wealth of data that Moscow and Peking would pay dearly for. Every agent of K Section was in mortal danger while McFee was here. Here was Madame Hung’s ace, with which she could demand all that she wanted. He wondered what Dickinson McFee might do if their situations were reversed. He knew the answer at once. McFee would kill him, silence him forever, if he sat where McFee sat now. He would find some way to do it and never hesitate.

  Durell took a small step closer to the seated man. That spot there, on the throat. A blow with the edge of his hand would crush the larynx. Another blow could snap the spinal column. He could do it. He had to do it. McFee had to die.

  He took another step toward the seated man.

  I’m sorry, sir, he thought.

  He heard the quick footfall of the Chinese behind him, but there was nothing he could do about it. Pain crashed through the back of his head and he fell forward and threw his arms instinctively at McFee’s rigid body. Another blow threw him sidewise and he was aware of an animal sound coming from somewhere, a groan, as he fell into a bottomless pit.

  Chapter 24

  A cool wind blew over his body, and a smooth warmth like silk slid across his chest, fingering his thighs and his groin; other silken things touched his lips. He struggled slowly up out of darkness. Oddly, he thought of Deirdre, of their nights together and lovemaking. His head ached. The cool wind made him shiver. Immediately there was pressure upon him, yielding silk, curves, the scent of perfume, the scent of a woman.

  He opened his eyes.

  “Ah,” she said. “I did not know you were so beautiful. Beautiful everywhere, for a man.” A shadow moved above him, the outline of a naked woman. Her breast brushed his face firmly. “My dear Durell. . ."

  He closed his eyes. Rhythm moved in soft flesh over and against him. His hands were numb above his head, and when he tried to draw them down, he couldn’t move them. He tried to jerk them free, and then realized he was strapped and padlocked, spread-eagled on a bed. The wind was open
and the cool wind smelled of the Mediterranean. He heard the sound of small waves splashing on rock. He was utterly naked.

  “I am sorry,” she said. “Huang thought you were going to attack General McFee. Poor man, he trained you well. Would you have killed him?”

  “Yes. Untie me, please.”

  “Does your head hurt?”

  “Yes.”

  “And this?”

  He felt a sudden sharp pain in his groin. He recalled Madame Hung’s long, strong fingernails. The pain was immediately replaced by a sensual, playful stroking and the woman said, “You shall make love to me.”

  “No.”

  “But you are already aroused. You see? You are too much of a man to resist this. I am an expert in the complexities of pleasure as well as pain. It is only a foretaste of your rewards when you become mine in every way.”

  “No,” he said again.

  “Do not be foolish. You are helpless. We have one more hour, at the most. Then you will either be mad with delight or dying most painfully.” Again her nails dug into him, suddenly agonizing. He felt a dim residual stinging in his shoulder, and he wondered what she had drugged him with. An aphrodisiac of some kind. Otherwise, he could not react in this way to her sexual play. He tried to detach himself from his body. Her hands were demanding, implacable. He felt her weight move on his belly. Her breath was perfumed. She had undone her thick black hair, and it hung in twin curtains on either side of his face, as if he were engulfed in a dark, warm cave, filled with lubricious dampness. Her eyes mocked him, slanted, obsidian, amused.

  “You see?” she whispered. “I offer you myself. And I demand you. You respond. You see?”

  “To hell with you,” he said.

  “Ah.”

  “You should be using a mannequin, the way I’m tied up.”

  “Oh? Your hands, of course. Am I so foolish?”

  “Then it doesn’t mean anything.”

  Her breathing was faster now as she moved rhythmically above him. He willed himself to be elsewhere. And she stopped.

  “What is it?” she whispered.