Assignment Maltese Maiden

by Edward S. Aarons

  He was not alone in the room.

  Someone breathed lightly in the darkness ahead.

  “Hung?” he called softly.

  A gun roared, the muzzle flame spitting at him. The shot came from straight ahead. He threw himself down behind the gambling table. In the brief flare, he made out slot machines, a roulette table, a double door at the opposite end of the room. And a slim, small shadow, framed in the doorway.

  A foot brushed the carpet on the deck. He raised his gun. From below came an increasing gush of water pouring through the yacht’s broken hull. One of the slot machines tilted over with a sudden crash. Again a shot roared, and the bullet shattered glass on the wall behind Durell. He crouched to his right. He could see nothing. He held his thumb on the flashlight, then went forward around the octagonal card table. Something swung overhead—a lamp, he guessed, the chain creaking as the yacht tilted again. Feet thudded overhead, hesitated. There were soft calls from searching men.

  “Hung?” he called again—and moved fast.

  The other’s gun slammed, and this time the bullet came dangerously close. He was ready for the muzzle flare, his eyes narrowed, looking slightly to one side when the other fired. Again he saw the outlines of the gambling room, a broken painting on the wall, Chinese tapestries, an elegance unsuspected from above. The small shadow was crouched on the floor. He had her spotted now. He heard a thin breathing in a lull from the noise of the sinking vessel.

  “Give it up, Hung,” he whispered.

  He thumbed the flashlight button and steadied his gun. The shaft of light from his torch hit the other squarely in the face as he squeezed the trigger.

  It was not Madame Hung, after all.

  It was Dickinson McFee.

  Chapter 26

  At the last split-second, Durell twitched his gun aside and deflected the bullet. McFee’s eyes were blind and staring in the flashlight beam. He held a revolver in both hands, and he shook as he tried to level it again at Durell. His square, gray face looked insane. The revolver roared once more and Durell drove past the roulette table, jumped over the fallen slot machine, and hit the small man in a drive just above the knees. McFee went backward against the wall and struggled to get up.

  His words were incoherent.

  “Dote—tooth, please—Hung worships—”

  “Sir,” Durell gasped. “Please.”

  The small man writhed in his grip. Durell twisted the revolver free with an effort. The small man seemed to be made of steel wires. He was tremendously strong. Durell rapped McFee’s gun down on the deck and broke it loose. A sound of pain came from the other’s distorted mouth. His eyes glared.

  “Sir, it’s me—Durell.”

  “No—sunglasses—Da Vinci Airport—”

  “Anna-Marie is with us,” Durell said.

  He wished urgently for Perozzo to come along. A search was taking place on the stateroom deck above, and at any moment Major Won or Colonel Skoll might appear. “Where is Deirdre?” he demanded urgently.

  “Uh—ah—Padgett?”

  “Yes. Take it easy. Stop fighting me.”

  “S-Samuel?”

  “That’s right. Cajun. You’re safe now.”

  A strange laugh bubbled in McFee’s throat. “Always safe, Samuel. Always. Look—uncap tooth—”

  The man opened his mouth wide. Durell stared at him and then switched off the flashlight. The darkness seemed to be twice as intense as before. He heard Skoll roaring his name from above-decks. The yacht moved again, sliding sidewise, with a great groaning of broken plates, a smashing of crockery somewhere, and the sudden thud of sliding furniture. Durell sweated. There wasn’t much time.

  He heard Perozzo’s urgent voice, calling.

  “Sam?”

  “Here. I’ve got McFee.”

  “Alive?”

  “And shooting. Hold him for me.”

  “Tooth. Uncap. Micro-camera,” McFee mumbled.

  Perozzo kneeled beside Durell in the darkness and whispered, “What’s the matter with him?”

  “He’ll be all right. He’s got an antidote to Hung’s drug in one of his teeth. We’ll have to extract it later. Any luck?” he realized his voice was too tight, too quick. “Deirdre? No, I haven’t found her.”

  “Or Hung?”

  “No.”

  He felt his nerves quiver with anxiety. It wasn’t possible

  that they had missed the Chinese woman. She had to be aboard. Deirdre, too. But where? He couldn’t guess. He knew Skoll and Won must have checked everything up forward, in the crew’s quarters, in the engine room. His stomach felt tied in knots, and his head pounded with pain again.

  “Take care of McFee,” he said. “At least, we’ve got him back.”

  “Sam, isn’t it enough? We’ll have to stand off Won and Skoll. They’ll try to take McFee from us.” Perozzo sounded desperate, too. “Let’s get out of here. The damned boat is sinking, anyway.”

  “No,” Durell said. “I want Hung.”

  Dimly, muffled by steel plates and bulkheads, he heard Anna-Marie scream.

  Chapter 27

  The yacht lurched again. This time, as the East Wind slid off the rocks, she tilted farther than ever, moved by the force of the water pouring into her hold. The deck suddenly tilted sharply and Durell lost his grip on McFee and felt Perozzo grab at the man in time to keep him from smashing against one of the gambling tables. From everywhere in the vessel came a din of crashing, smashing, and dismayed yells. Something lifted under Durell and he sprawled near the double doorway at the opposite end of the gambling room. His first thought was that part of the deck had come loose. He grabbed at the edge of it and realized that a hatch in the deck had come open. He pulled it all the way up and let the lid bang against the carpeted floor away from him.

  He clung to the lip of the small hatch and peered down. From somewhere in the blackness down there, gurgling with water, Anna-Marie screamed again.

  “Sam!”

  It made sense, he thought angrily. Mr. Lee, the Hong Kong owner of East Wind, was not above smuggling anything on the side while he was under Hung’s thumb. The stout man lay dead in the stateroom above with a cut throat, but his device, this secret compartment, was still useful. Hung must have known about it. She was down there. She had to be. With Anna-Marie. And maybe Deirdre and Lee. Hung had gotten to them first, after all.

  He could see nothing down there. He did not dare use his flashlight now. He heard Perozzo talk urgently to McFee, who mumbled now and then in the incoherent grip of drugs. Water rushed amidships. The yacht seemed to have settled permanently at its awkward angle now, and the deck felt steadier. Durell hauled himself upward against the slant of the deck and got a leg over the edge of the hatch, then lowered himself carefully into the blackness.

  His feet touched riveted plates less than five feet below. He ducked his head, listened to water slosh and gurgle up forward. For the moment, the yacht seemed in no danger of further slippage. He clung to the tilted deck plates, unable to stand upright. He felt his way aft, crouching, gun in one hand, torch in the other. Water slapped at his ankles. He could see nothing. The place smelled like bilges, of diesel oil and rotted hemp. He came to what felt like a pile of broken crates, probably the remnants of one of Mr. Lee’s smuggling expeditions. Mr. Lee had used the gambling room as a front. No customs inspector would have looked farther or ripped up the deck carpet to find the hatch, after finding the gaming loot. He made his way around the jumble of broken boxes. He had the feeling of space around him, reaching from port to starboard of the yacht.

  He ventured a soft whisper.

  “Anna-Marie?”

  He was shocked by a prompt response surprisingly close to him. “Here I am. Here. Sam?”

  Her voice sounded broken.

  “Come out of there,” he said.

  “Sam, I’m sorry, I—”

  Lights went on, dim bulbs in metal wire cages fixed to the overhead. They flickered out, came on again, obviously operated on the vessel
’s auxiliary batteries. He saw that almost half of the yacht’s bilges had been converted into this secret cargo area, extending from the stem to amidships. It was cluttered with debris and, forward, with gurgling oily water. But he took no time for that.

  Anna-Marie was crouching over two figures that had been tied to ring-bolts let into the yacht’s double skin. The girl still wore her round blue sunglasses. Durell moved toward her across the awkwardly slanted deck. His face was blank, his blue eyes almost black.

  The two people tied to the bulkhead were Deirdre and the young Chinese named Lee. Anna-Marie crouched over the man’s body, swaying slightly. Her face was stained with tears. There was blood on her clothing, in her hair. There was much more blood on Lee and on Deirdre.

  Durell could not see their wounds. But abruptly he was back in the nightmare where he’d seen her lovely, dead face floating before her.

  Now the nightmare was real.

  Something ended inside him.

  He heard Hung’s laughter, echoing hollowly in the low-ceilinged, cavernous place.

  He stopped thinking. He was aware of a rage that all but consumed him. His mind went blank, yielding to the anger, burning in dark flames all through him. He turned slowly. The dim light made a pattern of light and gloom all through the cargo area. He did not see Hung. He looked for her and and heard the echo of her sardonic laughter in the back of his mind. He could not find her. He knew he was a dead man. It was all over. Wherever she was, she was ready to kill him. His glance flicked back and forth over the jumble of debris in the hold. Crates, cartons, broken porcelain, smashed furniture, delicate antiques from Mainland China, a treasure that European collectors would have paid vast sums for. Whatever the senior Lee’s faults, he hadn’t ever given up his penchant for making money. But that was all over with. Hung was here. They were all trapped in this damp, flooding hold of the sinking vessel. But he wanted to see her die first. She had to die. He was consumed by this need, and it made him cold through the anger, made him forget who and what he was, made him only a hunter stalking his prey, allowing nothing to interfere with his goal.

  “Madame Hung?”

  His voice boomed through the open space. He heard Anna-Marie weeping. Water gushed and gurgled again. The tilted deck gave everything an unreal air, distorting vision with the dim light from the overhead bulbs. Things floated in the water amidship. He couldn’t define them. He crouched, holding his gun.

  Hung’s voice came from everywhere, moving sibiliantly along the bulkheads and through the wreckage.

  “Are you surprised at my revenge, Durell? Did you expect anything else?”

  “Why did you kill them?”

  “You can blame yourself. I offered you wealth and power. You refused me. So I killed them all! They are dead, you hear? Deirdre and Lee are dead. And I shall kill you, too!”

  “But you can’t escape. It’s all over.”

  “I shall get away.”

  “All your own people are dead or captured,” he said.

  “And I’ve got McFee. He fooled you all along, you know. He used an antidote to your drugs. He put himself deliberately in your hands, to smoke you out. It was all a trick, on his part. And he succeeded. You’re finished—”

  He felt the impact of the bullet before he heard the shot. His left leg went out from under him. He heard her laughter as he went down, sliding on the slanted deck. His leg was numb. He crashed into some crates, felt them fall upon him, and they slid with him down the cargo hold toward the oily water at the far end. Then he saw her as she stepped out from her hiding place behind some steel struts that supported the overhead. Her pale ivory face was triumphant, enraged. Her eyebrows over her slanted black eyes were wings of wicked victory. She had a gun in her hand, and she fired again as he slid past her, helpless, to splash into the water at the other end of the hold. The cold shock of the flood struggled against his death wish. A numbness had gripped him since he saw Deirdre covered with blood, but now it began to ebb away. Still, he had lost his gun in the fall. He was helpless, unarmed.

  “Wait—”

  He looked up toward her. She said, “No, Mr. Durell. Now. I said you were finished. And it is so.”

  Her voice was like the hiss of a serpent echoing in the clamor of the sinking vessel. She came toward him as he floundered in the water. Debris floated about him. His rage now was different from what he’d felt a moment ago. It was not a time to die. Not like this, here in this place, at Hung’s hands. He looked beyond her to where Anna-Marie huddled over the two bodies. The faint light made Hung’s figure seem enormous, casting huge shadows in the hold.

  Through the hatch behind her came Major Won.

  The Chinese from the Black House paused and looked and did not move. His gun was leveled at Hung’s back. She did not know he was there. She was intent on savoring her revenge. But Major Won did not fire.

  “Wait,” Durell said again.

  He tried to stand up. The water was above his waist. His leg would not support him. He stared up into the muzzle of Hung’s gun. Major Won stood frozen, watching.

  “Do you beg for mercy?” Madame Hung hissed.

  “Would you like that?”

  “There will be no mercy. No pity. You are dead, Cajun. You and Deirdre and the traitor Lee. All of you.”

  Why didn’t Won fire?

  The man smiled, his one eyebrow lifted, the scar over his other eye oddly white in the yellow gloom. Durell struggled forward out of the water. His leg was numb and bleeding badly, but pain was beginning now. Something bumped it, bringing more pain—a piece of wood from one of the broken crates. He put a hand down, suddenly gripped the two-by-four, and threw it with a great splash of water toward the woman’s figure. At the same time he flung himself backward into the flood. Hung fired. The shot clamored at him as he fell; he saw Won still standing there; and then he splashed aside and upward on the slippery deck, out of the water, seeing the woman above him, her hands empty, the gun knocked from her grip. Somehow he found the strength to drive up at her. She started to turn sidewise just as the yacht groaned, then slid with a jolt on her side again. The water behind Durell came up with a great surge and helped him forward like a huge push at his back. Tom steel screamed overhead, and something crashed tremendously on the upper deck. He caught Hung and pulled her toward him, back and down into the water. The woman was like a snake, suddenly explosive in her effort to escape. He got his hands around her throat and pushed her head down. He thought of Deirdre’s dead face, her bloody, tortured body. His rage made his grip tighter. Oddly, Hung stopped struggling. He pushed her head deeper into the oily water. She was limp, unresisting. He saw that her eyes were open beneath the scum. Major Won shouted in Chinese, but the words were vague, far away, screened off by Durell's anger. Then he saw Won raise his gun at last, and the report slammed violently around the steel walls of the cargo hold.

  At the last instant, he brought the woman’s body up out of the water and held her between himself and the Chinese. Won’s bullet slammed into her body. One, and then another.

  Won screamed in fury, his round face contorted, as Durell flung the woman’s body aside. She was dead. He did not know who had killed her—himself or Major Won. But there was no mistake about it this time. She was finished. Her body floated away from him in the flooding hold. It didn’t matter anyway. Won was going to kill him, too.

  Then there came a bellowing roar and the massive shape of Colonel Skoll charged down the hatch to slam into the Peking agent’s back. Major Won went down, fell over Anna-Marie, and skidded toward Durell. His gun fell free, slid down the deck, and Durell scooped it up as he limped out of the water.

  “All right,” he gasped. “Everybody hold it.”

  “Are you hurt, Comrade Cajun?” Skoll shouted.

  “Not badly.”

  “And Hung? Is that—”

  “She’s dead,” he said wearily.

  Chapter 28

  Perozzo kept saying, “She’s alive, Sam.”

  Anna
-Marie said, “So is Lee.”

  Durell did not believe it. Perozzo tore strips from his shirt and tied them around Durell’s thigh. He had sliced away Durell’s wet slacks and his strong, square hands were deft and gentle as he worked. The Italian’s face was dirty, smoke-stained, and every now and then his chest heaved spasmodically as he tried to regain normal breathing.

  The yacht had settled firmly on the rocks as the shallow tide went out. The beach gripped her battered hull, and she was not sinking any more. They were all in the salon aft, under the torn and sagging awning. Lights shone from the battery-operated secondary power. From the chaise where Durell sat while Perozzo bandaged his wound, he could see other lights from the fishermen’s houses around the cove. Surely there would be a police alarm out now. There would be a lot of explanations to give. Too much, he thought tiredly.

  “Forget it, Carlo,” he said.

  “No, I tell you, she will be all right. A profusion of blood, yes. Hung cut Lee badly. Deirdre has a wound on the side of the neck. That woman loved to cut throats, eh? But she was in a hurry. She inflicted no serious damage on either of them. Go look at her.” Perozzo spoke in a lower tone. “You saw Deirdre in the darkness. In poor light. Sam, she is alive. But we are not finished yet. We have McFee and Lee and Anna-Marie, eh? But we also have Skoll and Major Won. They are both furious that Madame Hung is dead. There will be a reckoning. Please, Sam. It is not over yet. I can’t handle it myself. I don’t know enough about it—”

  Durell’s thoughts stirred again. He pushed Perozzo’s hands from his wounded leg. He did not remember how he had gotten abovedecks, after Skoll stopped Won from killing him in his fury. He felt the cool Mediterranean wind brush his cheek. The night was dark. He felt emptied, tired, dirty.

  “You’re sure Hung is dead?” he asked.

  “Yes, yes. No mistake, this time. Deirdre is over there with Lee. Anna-Marie is a good nurse. They will both be all right. They will need a doctor, a hospital. We must get ashore soon. But Skoll says no, we finish our business first.”