Assignment Madeleine (8 page)

“What do you know about it?”

DeGrasse shrugged. His youthful face looked tired in the
harsh glare of light from the open doors of the hotel. “L’Heureux shot him
twice, once in the lung and once more in the stomach. Monsieur Boston was dead
when we found him.”

“And where was that?”

“In the south quarter of the town. It is my belief that
Boston was negotiating with dissident elements among the rebels. He would not
tell me what the subject of his negotiations was, but for the last week he was
very cheerful and optimistic. He seemed to expect great things from his work as
mediator.”

“Did he mention any particular sums of money being
involved?”

DeGrasse looked puzzled. “No, monsieur.”

“Did he tell you any of his thoughts about L’Heureux?”

DeGrasse rubbed his smooth jaw. “I distrusted L’Heureux, you
know. This American had an undesirable reputation, you understand. But I had to
be tactful. Boston said he knew all about the man and was on his guard and
chose to employ him in his negotiations with the rebels. But evidently Boston
was not careful enough, eh?”

“Why are you so sure L’Heureux killed him?”

“He was caught on the spot by the locals. It was in Orrin
Boston's flat, behind a Moslem café run by a Kabyle who was friendly with
Boston. When they heard the shots they rushed in and found Boston dying and
L’Heureux with the gun in his hand. L’Heureux tried to maintain it was a
terrorist murder, but no one else was on the scene. He is guilty, monsieur. And
I do not envy your job of taking him back to the frustrating processes of
justice.” DeGrasse slapped his carbine. “Orrin Boston was a man highly
respected by everyone here. Even loved, one might say. My own brand of justice
for his murder would be cleaner and quicker.”

“My orders are to bring L’Heureux back unharmed,” Durell
said.

“And mine are to assist you in every possible way.”

“Then shall want a truck and a driver by tomorrow morning.”

“The nearest contact with other Army units who could give
you reliable escort to Algiers is well over a hundred kilometers to the north.
I could not spare an escort large enough to insure your safety. Not for several
days, at any rate."

“No escort at all would be better than one that is too
small, yet attracts attention. Do you understand?”

“We shall discuss it at your convenience.”

“Now, if I may see Orrin Boston’s living quarters, Durell
suggested quietly.

The jeep driver, who said his name was Jean
Letou
, was a sweaty man in a stained uniform,
steel-helmeted, with tired, bloodshot eyes that peered with suspicion at every
shadow on the narrow, twisting streets they followed. Durell carried a
snub-nosed .38, but he kept it in his pocket. He had to remember this was not
his war.

The town was quiet. Durell looked at his watch and saw it
was almost midnight. Here and there a hurrying figure showed briefly
in the shadows, and the driver tensed physically as they passed by, but nothing
happened. They were moving away from the sector of town where the raid had
occurred. Jean turned down a narrow street where the stone houses seemed to
lean over them, their balconies almost touching overhead to form a tunnel.
Lights shone ahead in a small square. Garish, naked bulbs gleamed over a long,
high wall where someone had daubed in red paint,
A bas les
francaises
!
The driver made a
spitting sound in his beard as they lurched by and then halted the jeep in
front of the dim entrance to a cafe.

“I had better go in with you, monsieur. It is difficult to
guess how they will regard a stranger. They are always nervous after the rebel
attack. Afraid of their brothers and afraid of the settlers’ territorial squads
who make reprisals.”

Durell surveyed the shadowy native building and the
surrounding alleys. “Did Boston live here?”

“He lived everywhere, they say, but this was his
headquarters.”

“Were these people his friends?”

“Everyone was his friend, monsieur.”

Durell looked at him. “Except for one.”

“
Merde
.”
The driver spit again, wiped his beard with a thick hand, and took his carbine
and stood on the rough sidewalk. “We have that one locked up at the command
post. It is a disappointment he will not be shot, I myself volunteered for the firing
squad.”

“Let’s go in,” Durell said.

The thin wail of a flute and the rhythmic beat of a
goatskin drum came from inside the café. There were several wooden tables
inside and half-a-dozen Moslems in European dress drinking tea. The music,
Durell saw, came from a radio. A dark—faced girl in a gray skirt and pink
blouse came toward them smiling, and then she stopped smiling.

“Jean, everything is quiet here,” she said quickly to the
jeep driver. “There has been no trouble at all.”

“It is this man,” Jean said, waving to Durell. “He has come
for Monsieur Boston’s belongings.”

Someone turned off the radio and the music stopped. There
was silence in the small, smoky room. Two of the Arabs got up and walked out.
The girl looked at Durell with sullen, hostile eyes. “There is nothing to take.
He owned very little, wanted very little.”

“I’d like to look around, anyway,” Durell said.

“As you wish,
m’sieu
. Follow me.”

She led the way through an arched doorway in the back of the
room and out through a heavy wooden gate into a back garden. The change in
atmosphere was startling, after the squalid café. A small fountain tinkled with
gentle
splashings
. A flight of stone steps
scaled the outside wall ahead to a doorway on a balcony above.

The bearded French driver said, “You go first, Zorah.”

The Arab girl smiled scornfully. “The rebels are not here.
There is no trap. There is no need to be afraid.”

“Nevertheless, you go first.”

She shrugged and climbed the outside steps to the door and
opened it. When she had put on a light, Durell followed the soldier in and
closed the door behind him.

There was a heavy baroque desk that looked incongruous amid
the delicately wrought Arab pieces. Durell went to it and opened several of the
drawers. The papers inside had been pawed around hurriedly. He looked in a
scented wardrobe closet. The fragments of a smashed radio tube glittered in
brittle silver slivers on the floor inside. That was all.

“Captain DeGrasse went through everything,
m’sieu
,”

Zorah offered. She stood near the doorway, her arms folded
across her breasts, one hip askew. “There was nothing of importance here, I
heard him say.”

Durell nodded and went to the window and looked out at the
courtyard they had entered. Darkness ruled down there. He couldn’t see
anything. He returned to the wardrobe and looked at Orrin Boston’s European
clothing and the fine Arab
kachabia
he must have worn often. Durell’s eyes were dark
and brooding. Boston had loved this Moslem world, and he had been doing a good
job for K Section here.

He turned to the girl. “You were here the night he was
killed?”

“Not here. Downstairs, entertaining.”

“Do you work in the café regularly?”

“Yes. I also cooked for Monsieur Boston and did his
laundry.”

“You were fond of him?”

The girl’s eyes were large and dark. “I loved him,
m’sieu
."

Durell was relentless. “How much did you love him?”

“We were—I did everything I could for him. All that he
permitted and accepted. I knew about his wife and family. I think he loved them
and loved me, too. He was a deeply troubled man in that respect, living in two
worlds, yet drifting as one lost on the sea.”

“Who killed him?”

“It was Charles L’Heureux,” she said flatly.

“Did you see it happen?”

“I was one of the first to run up here when we heard
the shot in the café. They had been quarreling, and finally they began to
fight. We heard the sounds of the struggle and then the shot. It was over
very quickly,
m’sieu
.”

“And L’Heureux was in this room when you came in?"

“Yes. With the gun in his hand.”

“Did he admit killing Orrin Boston?”

“He is a devil, that one. A laughing devil. At first
he tried to say it was a terrorist. But we know no one was here from the
rebels. I—I tried to kill him.” She lifted her skirt and showed a long, thin
poniard strapped to her firm thigh. “With this,
m’sieu
.
But he is strong, that one. He laughed and took it away from me. Then the
soldiers arrived and they took him away. And the body.” She made a dim
swallowing sound and her face twisted

with grief. “Orrin is buried in the military cemetery at the
command post.”

Durell looked around the ornate Moorish room again. He
wondered who had taken Orrie’s radio. He tried to feel the presence of the man
who had lived here, to capture the sight and sound and look of him, but it was
difficult to place him in this alien environment.

Nobody had mentioned the huge sum of American currency that
had vanished. He decided not to say anything about it, either. He looked at the
French jeep driver. “Let’s go, Jean."

The bearded soldier turned his bulky form toward the door
and waved his carbine at the Arab girl. “Forward, petite.”

“Don’t push me,” she said. “I live here.”

“This place is restricted,” the soldier said. “Co first.”

The girl looked resentful as she went out. The courtyard
below was filled with shadows that moved in the wind and the moonlight.
Durell closed the door and descended the stone stairway outside. The girl slipped
ahead through the gateway to the garden behind the café, and then the jeep
driver followed.

Durell did not see it happen. He came through the gateway in
time to hear the thud of the thrown knife as it landed in the soldier’s back.
He heard the grunt forced from the bearded man's open mouth, then the crash as
the soldier fell. Durell dropped to one knee and crouched in the shadows
against the high, vine-grown wall. The Arab girl had turned at the sound. She
was beyond the fountain, on the other side of the garden, near the back door to
the café. She screamed.

Durell’s gun was in his hand. He felt hard stones under his
knee, he saw the shadows moving intangibly against the walls of the dark,
silent houses around them. The man with the knife could be anywhere. He looked
briefly at Jean. The soldier was dead. The knife had been thrown with
deadly aim. Its hilt shone with polished wood and that part of the blade
extruding from the Frenchman’s back glistened in the moonlight.

The Arab girl screamed again. Durell felt the fury of
frustration. The ambusher was too well concealed. He wasn’t moving to betray
his position. There was nothing to shoot at.

Then there came a shout from the house to his left, and a
muffled shot. A whistle blew, high and shrill, from the street beyond the
café entrance. Another shot cracked. Durell stepped over the dead man and ran
through the café to the street. The Arabs in the café sat frozen at their
tables. Their dark faces were like stone.

In the street, a French patrol was fanning out toward the
nearest corner. A man stood on one of the high roofs there, holding a rifle.
One of the troopers took aim and fired carefully. The man was a dark
shadow, rigid for a moment against the moonlit sky. Then he fell, cartwheeling
to the street three floors below. His body made an ugly breaking sound as he
hit. The French soldier who had fired the shot got up and walked toward
the body and kicked it futilely.

“He was a sniper the rebels left behind,” a young lieutenant
said breathlessly. “Was anyone hurt?”

“One of your comrades lies behind the café with a knife in
his back,” Durell said.

“Your driver?”

“Yes.”

“These murderers grow more fanatic every day. I knew Jean
well.” The lieutenant sent two men hurrying through the cafe. Durell looked for
the Arab girl, but he didn’t see her. He pocketed his gun. The young lieutenant
was staring at him. The Frenchman said, “You will need another man to escort
you back to the hotel.”

“I’m not going back to the hotel just yet,” Durell said.

The command post in the farmhouse was only a short drive
from town. Durell took the jeep there himself. The sentries waved him past the
barbed wire into the compound, which was floodlighted by powerful spots
placed on steel posts. Durell noted the weary anger and tension on the faces of
the troops.

DeGrasse was in his office. He still wore his black beret,
but he had unslung the set of grenades dangling from his shoulders. He looked
exhausted. He listened to what Durell told him about the murder and nodded.
“Another one, then. It is often this way. For no reason, a good man dies. I
shall have to write to his wife.”

“And the assassin?”

“He was also a man. And dead, too. One wonders monsieur,
where the balance lies.”

DeGrasse agreed to let him talk to L’Heureux alone. Durell followed
a guard to the big barn across the compound and walked up the steps to what had
been the loft, now divided into cells. The soldier unlocked the heavy wooden
door and stepped back with his rifle ready, speaking to the man inside.
You have a visitor, pig.”

Durell went
 
The guard
outside snapped on a light
 
Charles
L’Heureux sat up slowly on the cot. He grinned at Durell.

"Well, chum. All the way from Washington?”

“I've come to take you back with me,” Durell said.

‘You got an American cigarette?” L’Heureux asked casually.
"I'm all out.”

Durell tossed a pack to the prisoner in silence. He took in
L'Heureux’ massive frame, the aura of arrogance, the blond hair and black
brows, the feeling of strength and brutality in him. L’Heureux lit the
cigarette gratefully and turned his back on Durell to look out through the tiny
cell window. “Is the raid over?”