Assignment Maltese Maiden

by Edward S. Aarons

  Durell shook his head. “No. He could have used all of K Section to check it out, rather than go off alone, by himself, to chase down a wild will-o’-the-wisp like this. He could have used our personnel to do the job, whatever it was. Why vanish like this?”

  “We don’t know,” Evan Crane said. His face and voice were heavy, as thick and savage as the coal he had mined in his boyhood years. “But if that doesn’t make sense to you, Mr. Durell, then the alternative is a defection.”

  “No,” Durell said again.

  Crane sighed. “Well, then, we come to the Pilgrim Project, may God help us.”

  Durell waited. Then he said, “He could have been kidnapped. If the letter was an appeal from his daughter—assuming this girl is his daughter, that she is still alive, in Libya or somewhere—he might have ignored whatever was asked of him. He would be suspicious, of course. That’s the nature of our business, Senator. He wouldn’t go off like Don Quixote, tilting at unknown windmills.”

  “True.” Evan Crane nodded. “And it’s true that he had to go to Rome on Pilgrim Project business. A navy conference, involving NATO, and he carried a copy of the complete counter-action plans in the event the Soviets forced passage of their naval equipment, including their V-subs, through the Suez Canal without negotiation. No nuclear weapons are to be permitted through the canal, by prior agreement.”

  “Pilgrim Project,” Durell said. “A US landing?”

  Senator Crane nodded grimly. “Yes.”

  “Authorized by Sugar Cube?”

  “No.”

  “Senator, are you talking about a totally unauthorized act of war on the part of our own US Navy personnel?”

  “It is only a contingency plan,” Evan Crane said quietly. “A planning operation to put our forces in a state of readiness. It goes on all the time at Defense. Of course, these plans are kept secret from the public, even from the White House. They are exercises in strategy and logistics. And that is the military’s job, Mr. Durell. To be ready to come up with something in any eventuality. Not really reprehensible. Most of these staff plans are scrapped, of course, dropped in the wastebasket by the hard course of real events, if you will—geopolitical and nuclear realities. But the plans must be made and remade constantly. Some of them are wild enough to give every man, woman and child in America screaming nightmares. But do you doubt that the Soviets—and Peking—don’t prepare plans in the same way? As I say, these things to date, like Pilgrim Project, go into the wastebasket, thank the Lord. So you see, Pilgrim Project is only a theory, an hypothesis based on possible projections of events.”

  “But if the Soviets or China get it?”

  “Exactly.” Evan Crane took his cigar from his mouth and studied it as if its fine Connecticut Valley wrapper held secret magic for him. “A propaganda hoo-hah of the first dimension. It would negate all of the President’s plans for future negotiations. And in any event, it would reveal our projected countermoves in the Near East before we are ready to do so.”

  “And Dickinson McFee had copies of Project Pilgrim?”

  “For the navy brass in Rome. Yes.”

  “He carried it with him?”

  “Yes.”

  “And wasn’t he met in Rome? Wasn’t he expected?” Evan Crane said flatly, “He didn’t take the plane that was scheduled for him or accept the courier-guards who were to accompany him. He went sooner, without authorization. At first, we thought it was his own security measure, this whole disappearance of his. A man in his position —if the KGB or the Black House in Peking ever got hands on him—well, no man is invulnerable. There are ways with today’s techniques to make any man talk. Drugs, pain, psychiatric tricks—you name it.”

  “Is it felt that he’s been kidnapped?”

  “Or defected. But kidnapped, in any case.”

  Durell said harshly, “Why are you so sure of it?”

  “Do you know his blackthorn stick? That little arsenal he always carries around with him?”

  “McFee is never without it.”

  “Well, he’s without it now. It was found by our people in a washroom compartment at Fiumicino Airport at Rome. Broken in three places and all the teeth pulled. No weaponry left in it. As if to show us what’s happened to our General Dickinson McFee.”

  Chapter 7

  It could have been a blind, of course. Durell considered the possibility that the blackthorn stick was a red herring, a deliberate device to cover McFee’s personal trail. But he couldn’t be sure.

  He flew to Rome with Deirdre, and gathered Charley Mills from Paris, Keefe from Sofia, Tom Damon and Carlo Perozzo. Safecracker, demolitions man, language expert, and former native of Libya. Hammersmith, with Fisher from ONI, was put at his disposal. Anything went. He had carte blanche. He was offered half the equipment of the American Sixth Fleet. He would have preferred to try to handle it alone.

  A preliminary sweep gave no leads in Rome. A similar survey of Malta yielded nothing. He had only the faded old snapshot of the girl-child, and the knowledge that McFee had received a letter from a woman who called herself the Contessa Bertollini, from a remote place on the map of the Libyan western shore called Bu Zahra, west of Tripoli and not far from the Tunisian frontier. A check of old civic records, those that had somehow survived the war in Rome and Naples, showed that there indeed were a Contessa Bertollini, a daughter, and a granddaughter.

  The family home of the Bertollinis in the hills east of Naples had long since been swept away for a concrete housing and apartment development. Nobody even remembered the name. Keefe, who went first to Malta, said there was nothing there. The name of Bertollini was enrolled in the ancient rosters of the Knights of St. John. There had been several contes, those fighting zealots who held the Turks at bay in the Great Siege and later at Le-panto. One of them, or a brother, had sired the ancestors of the old, old woman who had lived out her stubborn life on the sandy wastes of Libya, in the maritime area known as Gefara.

  Nothing else.

  No trace of McFee in Rome, Naples, or Malta.

  There was some consolation. He had Deirdre with him for the moment.

  He lay awake in the darkness of their hotel room in Rome that first night, feeling the warmth of spring in Italy, aware of wisteria drooping from the window balcony, of the sounds of motorcycles, scooters, and Fiat traffic below. Lights moved across the nineteenth-century painted ceiling.

  “Sam, where can he be?” Deirdre whispered.

  She lay quietly beside him, her body long and soft and warm against his. They had made love quietly, with the contentment that only she could produce in him. But he was not really at ease. He felt her breast against his shoulder as he turned on the bed, away from the balconied window.

  “I wish I knew,” he said.

  “Maybe he’s dead. It’s strange—how fond I’ve become of him since he took me into K Section.”

  “I know.”

  “I can’t imagine his falling victim to a trap.”

  “Neither can I.”

  “Then you think he’s disappeared deliberately?”

  “It’s some game he’s playing.”

  “No,” she said. “That would be too dangerous. Against all the rules.”

  He smiled thinly. “McFee makes the rules. And I don’t always follow them, either, Dee.”

  “I know, darling. That’s why I sometimes think—I wish—I envy all the normal, ordinary people in the world.”

  “It’s too late for that,” he said.

  “Is it? Truly?”

  “They’d never let me go, Dee.”

  “Do you want to go? Do you want to get out?”

  He didn’t have to think about it. “No.”

  She was intelligent and sensitive enough not to suggest that he loved his work more than he loved her. They were quiet for a while, and he was aware of her body, her mind and presence, and did not want to admit that Deirdre was the most important thing in the world for him. To admit it would be the first step toward disaster, vulnerability, an
d eventual death for him. His enemies were too implacable. He had done them too much hurt in the past for them to forgive and forget. Those red tabs on his dossiers in Moscow and Peking meant he had to live alone, responsible only for himself and his job, to no one and nothing else.

  “Dee, did you ever talk to him about the child in the snapshot? You were in his apartment often—the only one in the whole place who had free access, a security rating that permitted his confidence. Did you ever ask about the child?”

  “Once. He only dismissed it as a bad memory. I asked him why he kept the photo, in that case. He simply did not answer.”

  “A ‘bad memory?’ ”

  “Those were his words.”

  “Why was he going personally to Rome to deliver the Pilgrim Project papers? They could have been sent in code. And we have a dozen good men as couriers.”

  “No code. The Soviets recently broke our last Kappa VII device. He decided to go alone. By himself.”

  “After the letter came from Libya?”

  “That’s true, Sam.”

  “So he went willingly.”

  “And you think his broken walking stick in the airport was a blind?”

  “I don’t know,” Durell said. “You’ll go to Malta, Dee. Get a cover as a tourist. Maybe your old job as a fashion reporter.”

  “I’d rather stay with you, Sam.”

  “I’m going to Libya. I think the first answers might be in that Bertollini house on the coast. Anyway, I have to look for myself.”

  “Can’t I go with you?”

  “You’re going to Malta.”

  Chapter 8

  The fifteen minutes that Durell had allowed for the raid on the villa had long since stretched out its time. A half-hour had gone by. Durell felt impatient and worried. Charley Mills was dead. Two of the Russians had been killed by a trigger-happy Keefe, who had been too casual about the prisoners. And the girl was not here.

  He went in to see Colonel Cesar Skoll.

  Outside the room where the prisoners had been herded was a piping of wind against the rococo corners of the villa, and the air beyond the windows was filled with a brownish haze as the ghibli blew sand northward out of the Fezzan. There were two large canopied beds in the room, and the five remaining Russians had been trussed up in them, some only half-dressed, aroused by the alarm at dawn, and others fully clothed. Their eyes regarded Durell with quiet hatred. They were big men, competent and professional. They took the results of their captivity with calm—at least, Durell thought, they were outwardly calm. Behind their eyes was calculating wariness as they considered his tall figure in the doorway.

  “Boom, boom, Amerikanski,” one of them said. “You are a dead man.”

  “Colonel Skoll.”

  “I told you, old friend, we would meet again.”

  “And I told you, the last time in Japan, that we are not friends.”

  “Ah, yes. But we are able to work together against a common enemy, nyet? The power behind each of us is too terrible to consider anything else. Have you any vodka? There is some in the kitchen. It would help to ease the beginning of this tragic day.”

  “Your man killed my guard,” Durell said.

  “And why not? Will you not kill us?”

  “I haven’t decided.”

  Colonel Cesar Skoll laughed. It was a hearty, deep-chested rumble, and his slitted, somewhat Mongolian eyes twinkled with pale, Siberian blue. His scalp was shaved, but he now sported a thick gray moustache, a la Stalin. He was one of the few among the prisoners who had obviously slept in his clothes. Durell nodded to Keefe, who was posted in the doorway. “Untie the colonel,” he said. “Special privileges, Cajun?”

  “Who let one of these men get free to shoot Charley Mills?”

  Keefe was guiltily angry. “We—I was questioning him, and he—”

  “And you untied him? In here, alone?”

  “Just one hand. But he was pretty quick.”

  “And now Charley is dead.”

  Keefe sullenly crossed the room and took his knife and slashed at Skoll’s ropes. The Russians’ guns were piled in a heap at the doorway. Durell kicked them all out of the room, into the corridor, where Mills’s body still sprawled. Skoll stood up, stretching and cracking his muscles like a great amiable bear. But the Siberian bear, Durell thought, was one of the strongest and most vicious of animals. He had crossed Skoll twice before, once in Morocco and again in Japan. There was a time when, after he had defeated the KGB man, he had thought that Skoll might come over the line, in fear of what his superiors might do to him for his failure. But the Russian was clever enough, slippery and wily at home in Moscow, and apparently he had covered his defeat at headquarters. The fact that Durell had beaten him meant little. The man was not to be underestimated. He was quick, clever, incredibly strong, dangerously competent in the business.

  And the fact that Colonel Cesar Skoll was here in the Bertollini villa in Libya made Durell hopeful. The morning had not been wasted, after all. If Skoll was here, then he himself was on the right track.

  “Come along,” he told the Russian.

  “The vodka is in the kitchen,” said Skoll.

  “All right. It’s as good a place as any.”

  The Russian preceded him, while Durell covered him with his machine pistol. The sound of the wind outside seemed to increase. Downstairs, Damon was keeping an eye on the Arab vegetable-dealer and his truculent boy. Perozzo was outside, watching the highway. The low-flying MIGS that had swept up the coast were gone now, circling far out and away over the Mediterranean. The sea was beginning to foam with whitecaps.

  Perozzo had turned the kitchen inside out, searching for anything hopeful. All the cabinet doors were open. On a marble slab atop the counter was ranged a row of liquor bottles, Strega, vodka, Campari, some American bourbon, a bottle of Stravei vermouth. Skoll went for the vodka like a bee for honey. He took two long gulps from the bottle, then turned and grinned, his Tartar face all wreathed with wrinkled smiles.

  “Boom, boom, Cajun. The trail is dead.”

  “What trail?” Durell asked.

  “The same that you follow, of course. Project Pilgrim. And that terrible little man who is your boss.”

  “Yes?”

  The glacial Siberian eyes twinkled. “You want me to talk? You have such little time, my Amerikanski friend. You heard our MIGS? They must have spotted the ship you came from. There will be men here soon enough, and then you will be my prisoner, instead of Cesar Skoll being in your hands. You should be nice to your old tovarich. This morning I do feel old, by the way. It all seems so hopeless.”

  “Did you find the girl?”

  “Ah. Ho. You know of her?”

  “A little.”

  “I should realize by now how clever you truly are, Gospodin Durell.” Skoll pretended to frown. “You have no military rank, have you, as I do? It is a strange custom that your people have. Only your little boss, the general, has the rank, hey?”

  “An old title from the war.”

  “Da. Our war. World War II, when we were comrades.”

  “I often wonder,” Durell said.

  “Well, in any case, the young woman is not here. The old Contessa died some years ago. Anna-Maria has vanished, too. We are up against it, you and I. We both search for her, and think that if we find her, we find Dickinson McFee.”

  “You won’t find him,” Durell said.

  Skoll drank more vodka and belched. Durell knew it was all an act. The man could ingest more alcohol than anyone he had ever known, and he never showed it. His peasant manners were a front to disarm and soften opponents. Behind his heavy brows and broad Tartar face, there was a mind as keen as a Cossack’s black. Sly, clever, a brain like a computer, the body of a Siberian bear. Durell was careful.

  “You found no one here?” he asked.

  “We came yesterday. No one was here.”

  “Then why did you wait?”

  “Why, it was to greet you!” Skoll spread his arms and roar
ed with laughter. “Who else would come so quickly on the trail but you, Cajun? I expected you. But I thought you would come alone. Your people would send no one less. But this time, my friend, you are on the short end of the balance pole. You will never find McFee. I will have him in Moscow before you know what has happened. And we shall learn all about your capitalist-imperialist schemes for war in this part of the world.”

  “Spare me the propaganda line,” Durell said quietly. “In any case, the Chinese may beat us both to it.”

  Skoll sat down heavily in a blue and white kitchen chair. His face went utterly blank.

  “The Black House?” he asked, whispering.

  “Who else?” Durell said.

  “The girl could have had a Chinese cook. She could have been partial to Chinese food.”

  Durell hefted the gun in his hand. It would be simple to put a bullet through that heavy bear’s head, bury Skoll, and get out of here. Keefe would do it without a qualm. There were no rules in the business, no gentleman’s agreement, no Geneva conventions. All of them here in this house were outside the law. Unrecognized, abandoned if in trouble, denied their very existence by the governments that had drawn up their contracts. The hypocrisy of the world, the ruthless game of power and geopolitics, still made them outlaws wherever they might go.

  “No, tovarich, you must not kill me,” Skoll said quietly, guessing his thoughts. “You need me.”

  “What for? You can’t tell me anything.”

  “If you are right, we have a common enemy. It is true, the Chinese were here. And two Albanians. Part of a mission to Libya, part of Peking’s drive to establish relations, airports, airlines and commercial interests in the Near East and all through Africa. Even in Israel. Oh, yes, they were here.”

  “Did you see them?”

  “When we came here, I saw just a little more than you see. We removed the evidence, for the most part. There were two women—Chinese—and two men—Albanians.” Skoll took another long gulp from the vodka bottle. “Quite truthfully, I was careless. We passed them on the coastal road. As we were coming out of Tripoli, they were driving in. I was not sure. I glimpsed the older woman.” Skoll’s eyes were suddenly as bleak as the Siberian steppes. “In hindsight, I recognized her.”