The girl was very pale. She wet her lips with a small, pink tongue, and Durell took a step back from her again, remembering her murderous capacities when she had tried to kill him in the medina in Tripoli. She stood up, smoothing her Pucci dress down the slim lines of her body.
“I don’t have to listen to this nonsense,” she said. “I want to go back to the hospital and stay with Lee.” She turned to McFee. “General—Dad—please make him give my glasses back to me.”
“Be careful, sir,” Durell said. “She’s very good at hap-kaido.” He crossed the room to the gray man and put the big blue sunglasses in McFee’s hand. “You can have this checked out at the Embassy. Ray Greene is stationed there. He’s very good at microphotography.”
Anna-Marie said, “Oh, you bastard.”
McFee’s face was like stone. He looked from Durell to the slim, dark-haired girl.
Durell said, “You’ve only lost a daughter that you never really had, sir. I’m sorry about it. I’m sorry, too, about all the good men who’ve died in the last few days. We’re rid of Madame Hung, but I’m not sure the price was worth it.”
McFee carefully put the sunglasses into a pocket of his robe. The action was final, decisive.
The girl realized it. She turned, fast as a cat, and darted for the door. Durell was ready for her. He knew her tactics and abilities. Even with his injured leg, he moved faster than she, blocking her way. She tried to kick at his thigh, and he lifted the blackthorn stick and brought it down in a hard, sidewise sweep that cracked her hard on her calf. She tumbled toward him, her mouth open, her hands arched like claws, slashing for his face. She was transformed by her fury. He raised the stick again and brought it down sharply across her left arm, and he heard the bone crack. The girl suppressed a scream and spun away across the hotel room, toward McFee. The small man stood up and, with a totally expressionless face, hit her with his fist. Anna-Marie went down, squalling; her dress was torn. Her arm was broken. McFee hadn’t quite knocked her out. She writhed, trying to get up, and Durell pinned her on her back with the ferrule of the stick at her throat. “Samuel—”
“I know. There’s a knife in the tip of the cane.”
The girl said, “W-what—”
“There is a button,” Durell told her, “under my thumb, a spring-loaded knife in the tip of this cane. If you move, I press the button. The blade will go through your throat, Anna-Marie.”
“You—you wouldn’t—”
“I would,” Durell said quietly.
The girl stopped struggling.
Chapter 30
McFee said, “Samuel, we have all had a bad time.”
It was an hour later. Anna-Marie had been quietly taken to the American Embassy. McFee did not speak to her again. There had been a call from the lobby of the Vittoria, from Colonel Cesar Skoll, and while McFee ordered an extra guard placed about Lee’s hospital bed, Durell went down to see the KGB man. Cesar Skoll tried to look urbane and smiling as they met at the bar, but he still reminded Durell of a highly dangerous Siberian bear.
“So, Comrade Cajun. I saw the young lady being taken away. You figured it out, eh?”
“Did you make a deal with her, Cesar?”
Skoll waved a slab-like hand and ordered vodka in the cozy bar. “It was a tentative gesture. I offered her and her Chinese friend quite a sum of money. She was quite greedy, do you know? I exceeded my authority, and Moscow said no. My superiors sometimes pinch kopeks, you know. It is difficult to operate properly under such circumstances.”
Durell said, “Moscow will be annoyed with you.”
“Ho. They usually are. But I am one of the best they have. So how can they complain? I have saved them the embarrassment of falling for Madame Hung’s trickery. And the lady is dead, of course.”
“Yes,” Durell said.
“You are certain you killed her?”
“Yes.”
“Well. That is one good thing, at any rate. You will have a drink with me?”
“Some day, perhaps,” Durell said. “Not now.”
Still using the blackthorn walking stick, he went back up in the elevator to McFee. He didn’t look back at the Russian. McFee had changed out of his robe and wore his familiar gray suit again. There was no change to be seen in the little man, except for a faint gleam of curiosity in his gray eyes as he looked at Durell.
“Are you all right, sir?” Durell asked.
“Quite, Samuel. And you?”
“It’s a rotten business sometimes,” Durell said.
“Yes. But a necessary one, until we all regain our collective sanity.” McFee paused. “I have been wondering about one thing. Back on the island of Gozo, in Bertollini’s tower house, down in the dungeon—when I was helpless, in Hung’s hands—you remember you came toward me. I couldn’t think clearly, of course—those drugs made a mess of things inside my head—but you had a most strange expression on your face, Samuel.”
“I did, sir?”
“I’ve been thinking about it. In your place, I’ve been wondering what I’d have done to insure silence on the part of Hung’s prisoner. If you had been permitted, Samuel, would you have killed me?”
Durell looked at the small gray man.
“Yes, sir.”
Then Durell turned, limped out of the room, and went across the corridor to where Deirdre waited for him.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Assignment Maltese Maiden Page 19