Assignment Madeleine (6 page)

Charley sighed, thinking how he would have to take Madeleine
with him for a short time, anyway. Until he found another woman, perhaps. He
wasn’t constituted to lead a monogamist life for long.

He lay back on his hard cot and drank from the cognac
bottle, then fished in his ragged shirt pocket for a Gauloise cigarette.
Only three left now. Tomorrow would be the last round of the game. It was too
bad that Orrin Boston’s suspicions about the money and el-Abri had forced his
hand prematurely. But it would work out all right. You had to learn to
improvise, because the only thing certain in this world was that everything was
uncertain.

The wind blew steadily through the window. Sand scratched at
the floor. Charley turned his body toward the wall. Against his wish, he
remembered the pine woods of Maine and his boyhood in the Thirties. The old
man’s potato farm went under the auctioneer’s gavel, the quarry job had finally
killed him, and the years on relief after that were no things of joy for a kid
to remember. There wasn’t much for a growing boy to do in those days.
Occasionally he got a job as guide for New York hunters who tossed him tips
like throwing bones to a dog. You went hungry often, and you fed yourself on
hatred, which could keep you warm. And after a while the hatred filled
your belly like a hot and satisfying meal.

Later, in the war, he already knew how to take care of
himself and make a good thing out of what others regarded as nothing. In the
confusion of North Africa, he saw a future untroubled by law or morality. It
had taken time, and there were dead men on the hail behind him; but the end was
now in sight. Charley smiled thinly in the loom of his cell. It wouldn’t be the
end the Hadji el-Abri hoped for him, or what the agent, whoever he was, would
want when he came for him.

He sat up abruptly when he heard the gunfire. It came
in sharp and spiteful echoes on the wind, snapping irritably on the southern flanks
of the town. First a rifle cracked, then the rattle of a tommy gun
followed, then more rifles, and finally the dull thumping of
grenades. Charley moved to the window as footsteps pounded through the stone
barn. Hoarse shouts and yells came from the compound outside. Floodlights
blossomed into bright, glaring eyes that scanned the night with the wild insanity
of a madman. From the window, Charley saw the first red flicker of fire
on the southern edge of town. A jeep motor roared into life, then several
trucks raced out through the gates to the road below.

Charley swallowed a sudden dryness in his throat. It could
be el-Abri out there, with his Kabyle guerrillas. They wanted him. Or it could
be el-Abri’s rivals, another guerrilla faction. In either case, he had cause to
fear, although fear was not in him normally. It was this cell, he told himself.
Being trapped if the rebel raid swept this far. He turned and yelled angrily as
several
chasseurs
pounded down the
steps outside, their equipment clinking, tommy guns in their hands. None of the
soldiers paid any attention to him. He returned to the cell window and gripped
the bars hard. The gunfire was reaching into the heart of Marbruk now,
coming this way up the slopes of the
jebel
, into the ruined vineyards and orchards of the farms.
It was a strong, bold raid, and the thin company of French troops would have
their hands full.

Charley was suddenly sure that the wild desert men out there
in the hot night were stabbing directly for him.

Jane Larkin heard the gunfire with a sudden quickening
in her almost like relief. From the window of her room in the only hotel
Marbruk could boast, she heard the thud of grenades and the hoarse shouts of
frightened people in the market place below. She leaned out through the narrow
window, but the mud streets were confused and dark, and all she glimpsed were
running figures in flapping robes and
kachabias
. Jane breathed a little
more quickly, her lips parted. Her boredom was forgotten. ”

“Jane, honey,” Chet said. “Please get away from there.

She turned to look at her husband, petulant anger changing
to scorn when she saw Chet loading a revolver as he sat on the edge of the huge
bed. “What do you think you can with that?”

“You can’t tell what’s happening out there,” he said.

“It’s the rebels, raiding,” she said impatiently.

“I know that. And there’s a chance they’ll break in here.”

“So you plan to defend me?”

“I’ll try, Jane,” he said quietly.

“You could have taken me away days ago.”

“It wasn’t possible. You know how it’s been.”

She spoke spite-fully. “Yes, but I didn’t know how it would
be when you sent for me, when I was with Daddy in Houston. You made it all
sound so romantic. So desert-
sheikish
. You didn’t
have the nerve to tell me how filthy it really was.”

Chet Larkin finished loading the .38 Smith & Wesson and
put it on the bed beside him. His brown eyes were tired, candid, and patient.
“Can you blame me for wanting you with me, Jane? Maybe I’m selfish, but I
love you, honey, and I missed you so damned much I told a few lies to get you
to join me here. I didn’t think you’d find it so bad, though. Not really.
I thought you might get to like it.”

“Like it?” She thinned her mouth. She smoothed her hands
down her hips. “We’re likely to get killed by those crazy people.”

“They probably won’t get this far. It’s just another raid.”

He didn’t want to go on arguing. This thing between them went
beyond Words, and he looked away from the anger and petulance in her face. He
hadn’t dreamed Jane would be like this. When he’d sent for her, he didn’t think
she’d find it all so bad, or that she’d be so helpless, and disinterested
in everything around her. The only thing she fastened her attention on was the
heat, the dirt, the minor discomforts of joining him here until his contract
ran out with
Davide
et
Fils
.
Should have left her in Algiers, he thought. She liked the plush St. George
Hotel. She’d enjoyed that day at the salmon-colored basilica of Noire Dame
d’Afrique
, high on Mt.
Bouzaréa
above the city. She’d liked Algiers, the sense of wartime excitement, the shops
and cafés and milk bars and green-bereted paratroopers on security duty. Asking
her to join him in provincial Marbruk was a mistake.

He had even entertained the dim hope that she could be
persuaded to his renewing the contract.
Davide
was
willing to make him chief of the geophysical crews, prospecting for oil out of
Hassi
Messaoud
. Things were
getting better out there. Lots of the oil riggers and prospecting engineers had
their families with them, living in the prefab air-conditioned huts. The steel
cabins were comfortable enough, with running water, electric lights, food
trucked in from Algiers. And every fourth week you got flown hack to
Algiers for free for a week of rest. Lots of other guys made it with their
wives.

But it hadn’t worked that way. Jane said no, flatly
and definitely, in total outrage. She wanted to go home to Houston.

They’d been married only a year when Chet got this chance to
work with the oil exploration teams in the Sahara with this affiliate of the
Société
Francaise
des
Petroles
. Jane was even more beautiful and more desirable
now than she was when he first met her in Texas. He’d recognized from the
first that her money and his need to carve a career for himself might
come into serious conflict, But Jane always had refused to discuss it,
laughing it off. And the first months had passed in a series of climactic
ecstasies that gradually pushed his worries into the background. He’d always
been a worrier, he thought too reserved and conservative. But living with Jane
should have made him aware of her personality flaws, whatever the joys
and carelessness of her ways. If he’d been more alert, he wouldn’t have sent
for her, and then this hopeless break might never have come about.

He had to admit his own weakness. He’d have done anything to
avoid a showdown with her, to keep her on any terms. But he’d lost her. Jane
held him in contempt now—not for anything special, but simply because he had
brought her into the discomforts and dangers of rebellions Algeria. She thought
he was selfish and cruel. He merely loved her.

He watched her move back now, shrinking from the louder
bursts of gunfire moving into the squalid town among the native
mechtas
. She lit
a cigarette and hugged her arms across her breasts, cupping one elbow in the
palm of her left hand. She was as tall as he, with long blond hair shining
softly in the dim glow of the single lamp in the room. Still beautiful, he
thought. He would never stop wanting her. But the last time they had enjoyed
uninhibited love-making had been at the St. George in Algiers, after he’d met
her plane at the
Maison
Blanche airport. That was two
months ago. Watching her proud body in the thin negligee she wore, he wanted
her now, this moment, ignoring the heat and danger that glittered in the night
air. If she would only smile, he thought, she could name her own terms for the
rest of their lives.

“Jane, please sit down. And maybe you ought to get dressed.”

“Why? Where would we go?”

“It would be better if you were dressed,” he said.

“You mean one of the natives might rape me?”

“Don’t call them natives,” he said. “Don’t condescend toward
them. It’s their country.”

"You know what they are,” she said angrily. “Since when
did you develop such a love for these dirty people?”

“They’re not all the same. They need help. Try to understand
them.”

“They’re killing and looting right now, aren’t they? Just
like a lot of savages.”

“They’re fighting for something they want.
Independence, freedom, equality-maybe they don’t know what it is themselves.
Maybe they’re going about it the wrong way. They make mistakes, but so do the
French. Don’t condemn them for trying.” He watched Jane drag angrily at her
cigarette. “Look, the French commander will be here any minute, I’m sure.
DeGrasse promised he'd make arrangements to get us to the coast tomorrow. The
raid may hold him up, but he’ll show up soon. Try to control yourself, will you?
Try not to find fault with everyone you meet here. This isn’t Texas,
don’t forget, and your father is a long way off, in Houston. Throwing tantrums
won’t buy us anything.”

Her mouth was jeering. “And until the Marines arrive, you
have your gun, is that it? Chet Larkin. My hero.”

He didn’t reply. He put the revolver aside, listening to the
alarming rattle of a machine gun that seemed to be firing from directly
under their second-floor window. From one of the dark alleys across the
market place, a man began to scream in a high, ululating voice. The sound of
agony made Jane suck in her breath sharply. Her face went pale. The gun rattled
again. Two slugs slashed through the narrow curtained window. The thin material
puffed inward as if slapped by someone’s hand. Plaster chipped from the walls.
Chet jumped for Jane and threw her to the floor and covered her with his body.

She breathed erratically under his weight. No more shots
came. Their faces were close together, and Chet could see the bright, excited
luminosity of her gray eyes looking up at him. They were the eyes of a total
stranger.

Chapter Seven

THE TELEPHONE rang. It sounded abrupt and shrill in the big
room. Chet felt Jane wriggle impatiently under him, trying to release herself from
his weight. “Let me up,” she said.

He rolled aside. The telephone kept ringing on the taboret
beside the big bed. The square outside was silent now. The whole town was
plunged into a sudden, unearthly quiet, in which the only sound was the
imperative ring of the phone. Chet walked across the room and picked it up.

“Monsieur Larkin? One moment, please.”

He lowered the telephone to his chest and looked at Jane.
“It's the French commandant. Are you all right?”

“Just a bit bruised from your gallant gesture,” Jane said.

“The fighting seems to have stopped.”

Jane examined a broken fingernail. “I want a drink.”

“Help yourself.”

“Where is it?”

He gestured toward the bottle of Martel near the bidet in
the corner, and Jane moved toward it, pushing up her thick yellow hair at the
nape of her neck. Chet put the phone to his ear again as a voice began to
rattle in the receiver. “Yes?”

“My apologies,
m’sieu
. Captain
DeGrasse. We have been busy, you understand? I may not be able to see you to
discuss your travel plans."

“What goes on with this raid?”

“It is being contained. I think you are quite safe where you
are. But you must remain at the hotel. Under no circumstances are you or your
wife to go into the streets until you hear from me again.”

“When do we get out of here, captain?”

“I had hoped to arrange a military convoy to take you by
truck to Algiers tomorrow. But I find myself unable to spare enough men.
However, a liaison plane is due any moment with an American who is to take a
prisoner back to France. I think I can arrange with him to take you and Madame
Larkin on the plane first thing in the morning.”

“That will be fine,” Chet said. “I certainly
appreciate if.”

“You are all right? You have not been injured?”

“No, of course not.”

“You sound rather strange,
m’sieu
.”

“It’s nothing. Thank you, captain.”

“Remain at the hotel. I will call again directly when the
plane lands.”

Chet hung up. Jane was pouring a second drink of the Martel
brandy. Her back was toward him. He got up and his shoes crunched on the
plaster gouged from the walls by the two machine-gun slugs that had entered the
room. He pulled the curtains tight over the window embrasure and put on another
lamp. At least the town’s power plant hasn’t been knocked out yet, he thought.