Assignment Madeleine by Edward S. Aarons Read Free Book Online

turned her face
toward him as they sat side by side on the double seat, and in turning this way,
her leg moved and her thigh pressed his. “Is there significance in what
you have just said?”
    He met her smile. “I have my faults, too. And you and I
understand each other. We are in the same business. We know the dangers of the
world and its few pleasures, too, perhaps.”
    “You know that I am in love with my Charles.”
    “Tell me about him, then,” Durell said.
    “There is nothing to tell. Brumont made it plain what a
woman’s role must be in this business of yours.”
    “The obvious one,” Durell said.
    “Yes. So I became the woman of Charles L’Heureux, in order
to become his confidant, so to speak. Does that shock you?”
    “Not really.”
    “And I fell into the trap of my own making.”
    “I’m not so sure of that,” Durell said.
    “But I do love him. And I believe in his innocence.”
    “You know what he is. You know the crimes he has committed.
An adventurer, fattening on a troubled world.”
    “But not a murderer,” Madeleine said flatly.
    “How can you be sure?”
    “When a woman lives with a man, she comes to know his
capacities for matters other than love. If he is considered such a terrible
man, why did your Mr. Boston take him into the service as an agent in the first
place?”
    “We compromise when we have to. L’Heureux is perhaps the
only American on the scene who knows as much about the rebels as he does. Orrin
Boston heard about him and chose to use him.”
    “So you think my Charles killed him. But I will help
Charles, if I can. You must understand that.”
    “There will be no help for him, if he killed Orrin.”
    “We shall see,” Madeleine said quietly.
    Durell looked at his watch. Africa, the bright city of
Algiers, and the airport at Maison Blanche was just
over the horizon of night.
     
    Chapter Six
    THE COMMAND POST of the chasseur unit stationed at Marbruk
occupied a stone farmhouse on the lower slope of the jebel overlooking the valley. The
farm had been a prosperous one, thanks to irrigation here on the fringes of the
southern desolation. It had been owned by a René St. Leger, a wealthy Frenchman
whose family had grown olives, and grapes for the strong Algerian wines, for
three generations. René had been knifed in the back while patrolling the town
with his territorial unit of home guards two months ago, and Captain DeGrasse
had occupied the farm when the rest of St. Leger’s family, wife and two
daughters, moved into their villa at Algiers.
    Aside from the main farmhouse, there were two stone barns,
and in the northernmost of the barns, half a mile from the house itself, was
the military prison. Two or three outhouses formed a cluster suitable for both
defense and internal control.
    At nine o’clock, Charley L’Heureux slipped a small wad of
hundred-franc notes to the private who guarded his cell in what had been the
hayloft and accepted a bottle of cognac in return. A hot wind blew through the
barred windows of his room, and sand hissed and moved along the Wooden floor.
He could feel it against his bare ankles, like the stinging bites of a thousand
gnats.
    “ Mon ami ,” L’Heureux; said to the guard, “a thousand thanks.
This will save my life.”
    “Nothing can save your life. Not the life of a traitor.”
    The guard was a thin, tired man from St. Nazaire ,
and he was homesick and fed up with Algeria and the rebels. Nothing he had seen
since he had been drafted could explain to his clerical mind what he was doing
here. “And I am not your friend, understand?”
    ‘Who did I betray?” L'Heureux asked. “No one but myself,
Pepi.”
    “One grows philosophical in jail, that is a fact.”
    “Look here,” Charley insisted. “I’m not French, am I?”
    “You have a French name.”
    "But I am   an
American. I was born in Arostuga , Maine, U. S. A.”
    “Then you are a traitor to your country, too,” Pepi said. He
had a tommy gun slung by its strap