Assignment- 13th Princess Read online

  Durell hoped no one hunted him.

  The mist had turned to rain. Londoners under black umbrellas swarmed like beetles. Durell stood under an awning before a pub. The plate glass window of a turf accountant’s office showed the street back to him. He scented greasy fish and chips as a stringy-haired youth strode by munching out of a brown paper bag. The afternoon was gloomy, the city dreary.

  He hailed another taxi.

  All he knew of the next phase of his assignment was that a room awaited him at the Hertford.

  “The Israelis want their own close-up on the situation, Samuel,” McFee had said. “They have no embassy in Dhubar, no base of operations. You’ll provide cover for the penetration.”

  “I’d rather not.”

  “Seems the Israelis are calling in some debts.”

  Durell spoke bluntly. “It adds risk to my primary mission, sir.”

  “The Joint Chiefs called the shot—I just spoke with the chairman. Sugar Cube is in their corner. You’ll be contacted in London.”

  “You’re giving me no choice?”

  “It’ll work out.”

  “I hope so. Any other chores? Errands? Odd jobs?” Durell felt his Cajun temper rising. “I work cheap.”

  “You’ll have your hands full.” McFee said it with a thin sound that might have been a chuckle, as if delivering a genteel punch line.

  Durell wondered what the joke was.

  The lobby of the Hertford was old and elegant, with scalloped marble pillars, ivory-painted walls, and white leather-upholstered furniture. The air was redolent of expensive tobacco and damp tweed. It was the sort of place that operated on a whisper and a nod. Durell signed the register, made a telephone call from a polished mahogany booth, ascended to his floor in a brass birdcage lift. He momentarily studied the door to his room, saw no scratches or dents beside the knob, no evidence of forced entry. He palmed the handle, tried it gently. The door was properly locked. A twist of the key and he pushed the door open, reached in and around to press the light button, kept the door between him and the room. There was no explosion, no sound of surprise. He moved inside and tossed his suitcase on the green bedspread and briefly noted a vase of fresh red carnations. Methodically following procedure, he checked the bathroom and an enormous oak wardrobe, his .38 S. & W. loose in his grip.

  Durell was a tall man, heavily muscled but surprisingly quick on his feet. He had dark blue eyes that could turn almost black. His face was lean and careful and hid his thoughts most of the time, so that those closest to him often wondered what went on under that cap of thick, black hair just touched with gray at the temples. Despite, his height he had learned the tricks of losing himself in a crowd, but a trained observer would see by his bearing that he was honed to quick and deadly combat.

  He could kill in many ways, with a finger, a pin, a rolled newspaper.

  But he preferred the snub-nosed .38.

  He paused in the middle of the large floral rug. This seemed just an ordinary room. His eyes slid to the white china vase with the carnations, and he considered it as he listened to the silence in the hall. He studied the flowers with deliberate care. There was no note. Then he turned away, checked table lamp and headboard, telephone, and ceiling lighting fixture for bugs.

  Satisfied, he exhaled a slow breath, turned once more to the vase. He regarded it as too obvious to hide a listening device, but he could not afford to ignore it, so he bent over it and spread the blossoms.

  There was a wicked spewing noise.

  Something wet and acrid stung his eyes and nose.

  Durell’s throat made a harsh sound of disgust and rage as he stumbled back, wiping at his eyes. The vase crashed against the floor, spilling red flowers, and a small metal cylinder, stiff tripwire attached to its valve, rolled between his feet.

  His struggle against the mind-warping, will-demolishing chemical was brief and vain. The world broke into pieces and spun around, flotsam in a whirlpool of incomprehension. The thump of his collapse to the floor came magnified a thousandfold and boomed in his ears like thunder.

  He had no idea how much time went by.

  Then he heard a door open. It did not bother him. A soft-edged voice told him to stand, and he did so—this was a dream, of course. Obeying without question, he held his arms out and watched calmly as the dapper, swarthy man fanned him, then kicked his fallen .38 out of the way.

  And now Durell stood before the open window and looked down through the gloom and rain to where the dish-shaped street lamps stared back like a row of tiny eyes.

  The man was repeating: “You will jump now.”

  Abruptly a vestigial will asserted itself. His eyes still fastened on the pavement below, Durell heard himself saying, “NOOooo . . . and half-turned back into the room. The word seemed to last an hour. A day. Suns came and went. Comets flashed.

  The universe exploded—a shot rang out.

  Durell swayed, looking back into the room.

  The golden-haired Dara stood stiffly over the man’s body, narrow lips drawn taut at the corners. A wisp of oil smoke rose from a Colt over-and-under derringer she held by her thigh. Her hazel eyes glinted angrily beneath their sweep of lashes as she glanced at her victim, then back at Durell. She tossed a wing of hair away from her freckled cheek and calmly broke open the derringer and extracted a bright, hot cartridge.

  “You don’t look so well,” she said.

  Durell collapsed.

  When he came to, nothing was changed in the room. The body still lay on the flowered mg where it had fallen among scattered red carnations and shards of the vase. His head was on Dara’s knees. He could breathe more freely now; the world was real, tangible—the dream was over. He rubbed his eyes, stared up at the girl’s solicitous face.

  “You killed him,” he said groggily.

  “Of course. And you almost took a seven-story step out that window.”

  “Who are you?” he asked.

  “Why, darling,” she said, “I’m your wife.”

  Chapter 2

  Durell sat up, shook his head, cleared the cobwebs. “No one mentioned a wife,” he said.

  “It’s the cover we Israelis have established. Rather good, don’t you think?”

  “Does that explain the wedding ring?”

  She held the smallish circle up to the light. “Not exactly every girl’s dream, is it?”

  “They picked what I could afford,” Durell said. He twisted over to hands and knees. He felt a bit light headed, but there seemed to be no other aftereffects of the drug.

  “To make the story convincing, I had to come from America with you, of course,” Dara said.

  “You could have let me in on the gag.”

  “I wish now I had. Maybe after all my efforts you wouldn’t have ditched me at the airport—is that the way you treat all the girls who show an interest in you? Anyway, I was afraid I would be overheard. It seemed safe enough to let the matter wait until we arrived in London.”

  Durell stood up, somewhat unsteadily, and rubbed his temples with the tips of his fingers.

  “Are you all right?” Dara asked.

  “I think so.”

  “He must have known about you, but not me.”

  “Your people reserved the room.”

  “He didn’t break our security, Sam;”—it was the first time she had used his name, and there was a corner-of-the-mouth toughness to the way she spoke it—“otherwise he’d be alive, and we’d both be dead.”

  They stared at each other, now tense and angry. Rain blew in the open window. Durell closed it, pulled the curtains, scooped up his pistol, and pushed it into his waistband. He tried to put this poor beginning out of his mind—it was no surprise that he had been betrayed. That was part of his business. Things didn’t change just because K Section’s computer printout put his survival factor only a shade above zero. At KGB headquarters in Moscow, at No. 2 Dzherzhinsky Square, his dossier was marked with a red tab. He was also on the kill list in the files of the Peacock Bra
nch of the Black House in Peking. The threat of death was with him always, in shadowed streets and dark wildernesses. He did not brood on it; that would only impair his functioning and invite disaster.

  The drapes muffled the rattle of rain as Durell gazed at the corpse. “Any idea who he is?”

  “They’re all Arabs, aren’t they?”

  “Maybe in your world.”

  “London’s a regular battleground since they’ve invested so enormously here,” she said. “They own seven and a half billion dollars just in British government stocks, treasury bills, and sterling deposits. Our bureau has settled in side by side to gather what intelligence we can.” She paused, blew an exasperated breath, and added, “Naturally, the Arabs resent us.”

  “Naturally,” Durell said.

  Hurriedly, he patted a wallet from the man’s coat. Dara’s derringer had drilled it, but enough was left of an international driver’s license to identify the owner as George Allen Cucera, thirty-two, with an address in Thaxted, an old Saxon town about forty miles north of London. Durell had little doubt that the name and address were fakes. In any case, there was no time to go and see. Tomorrow he must be in Dhubar.

  He pocketed the driver’s license, nodded toward the body. “Let’s get rid of it,” he said. He grasped the wrists. “Help me straighten it. We’ll roll it up in the carpet and dispose of both. There’s an incinerator in the basement. I pulled the hotel plan from our files before leaving.”

  “Clever.”

  “Just cautious.”

  She tucked her derringer into her blouse and took the ankles, and they pulled the sacklike weight into a straight line, its head swinging down loosely, mouth open. A dark line of blood ran from the lips back to the ear. Dara showed no emotion as they rolled the remains in the rug and lugged it, via the freight elevator, to the basement incinerator. Most maintenance personnel were off duty now. They encountered no one. The oil-fired incinerator crackled, hissed, and blew as they headed back upstairs.

  Durell dug a flask of bourbon from his suitcase and poured them drinks. He noted that his hand shook slightly and was annoyed. The warmth of the liquor glowed on Dara’s freckled cheeks as she sat on the green bedspread, legs curled under her, denims tight around her slender thighs and hips. There was a look of rock candy in her hazel eyes. You could break your jaw on her, Durell thought.

  He spoke evenly, holding his glass: “There will be others, you know.”

  “Let ’em come.”

  “It isn’t a game.”

  Her voice was flat with sarcasm. “That dead Arab wouldn’t think so.”

  Durell watched her. She was too flip for his taste. He wished he knew more about her. She squirmed a little under his gaze, and her eyes clouded uncertainly. She raised her glass. “To our partnership?” she said.

  “While it lasts,” he said.

  Durell did not care for this arrangement, not at all. He preferred to work alone, at least with someone tried and true, like Willie Wells, the black Philadelphian exmercenary; or the burly, tenacious Greek, Mike Xana-kias, who had been in anti-Nazi partisan; or Chet Clauson in Vienna, a top Central for K Section.

  But Clauson had been killed, he reminded himself.

  So many had been killed.

  His stare returned to the sleek, lethal Israeli girl. Only time would tell whether she was an asset or a liability. He tossed down the rest of his drink, decided to make the best of it. “Get off your fanny and take me to meet your boss,” he said.

  “Sure thing, Sam.” Now she sounded subordinate, for no reason he could fathom.

  As they left the room, the image of flashing death’s teeth came back to haunt him for a moment, and he suppressed a shudder. Dara seemed to notice and took his arm.

  Anyone who saw them might have taken them for just another pair of newlyweds.

  They hired a Ford and took Bond Street south to Piccadilly. Dara pointed to Asprey and Company, jewelers who had received such a volume,of business from visiting Arabs, she said, that the shop had opened outlets in Oman, Abu Dhabi, and Qatar. They turned west, and Durell decided the black and silver Rolls Royce back there, barely identifiable in the late dusk, was tailing them. They slid past the high-walled gardens of Buckingham Palace, and he said nothing. The overcast had hastened the night, and street lamps, neon over shops and pubs and discos, the lights of cars, made a circus of the street. Rain had become fine mist that wafted glowing through the lights and made headlamps fall as sheets of yellow silk on the pavement.

  Durell caught the flick of Dara’s eyes on the rear-vision mirror. She did not mention the tail.

  His familiarity with London was more than casual, but she drove, handling the wheel with an alert expertise that showed she would be at home in any metropolis. She turned from Knightsbridge, with its elegant shops, into Wilton Place and entered the Belgravia section south of Hyde Park. A horse-drawn carriage clattered down a cobbled back street, down a mews where once horses were stabled and servants quartered. Now the mews were inhabited by fashionable painters and the owners of trendy boutiques. It was a well-preserved neighborhood of off-white Georgian and early Victorian town houses, the dwellings of ambassadors, aristocrats, and wealthy show people.

  “An Arab spent a million dollars for that one,” Dara said, pointing through her reflection on the window. “He is a sultan, of course. His people still five in woolen tents.”

  “At least they have their Bedouin heritage. Wealthy Texans were buying places here when all their neighbors had were tumbledown shacks and outdoor privies.”

  Dara thrust out her jaw. “Whose side are you on?”

  “It’s not a matter of sides, just balance and perspective. The Arabs aren’t the first nouveaux riches to squander their wealth.”

  “You want to talk about perspective, Sam? I’ll tell you about perspective.” Dara’s voice lowered. “Perspective is what you get looking down the muzzle of a Syrian howitzer.”

  Durell regarded the woman, her grip tightening on the wheel. An unrelenting hatred seethed beneath that pretty exterior. He sighed, and said: “You’re going to be a big hit in Dhubar.”

  As if venting her rage, Dara suddenly slammed her foot down on the gas pedal, and the slow-moving Ford screeched and roared around a corner into a dark street, rumbling over an old brick pavement. “Let’s lose that Rolls,” she cried happily.

  “I was wondering if you ever would,” Durell said, and twisted around to look through the rear window. A pair of headlamps, already two blocks distant and webbed with a misty glow, swung into the street after them.

  Dara swung the wheel to the right, and the Ford fishtailed around a corner, burst out on Sloane Square near the Royal Court Theater, and barrelled down King’s Road, weaving in and out of traffic. Dara handled the car better than most men in Durell’s experience. Street moisture sizzled under the tires as she cut down to Cheyne Walk and came back up the Chelsea Embankment, with the Thames on their right glowing with buoys and ribbons of reflected light.

  “They’re out of sight; you’ve lost them,” Durell said.

  The car slowed. “Dam!” Dara said. “They didn’t even make it interesting.” She scanned the rear vision mirror with hopeful eyes, as if wishing that the shadowing car would appear again.

  “Let’s get on with our business,” Durell said.

  The house of the Israelis, brick with white stone trim, sat back from the street, behind a high privet hedge and cast-iron fence that gave it some protection against the curious and the deadly. The parlor was furnished with contemporary comfort and style, the walls paneled in dark wood. There were a hundred-year-old chandelier, books in the bookcases, a fire in the marble fireplace.

  Beyond, every room in the house was coded to a purpose that allowed entry only by those assigned to it. Durell smelled hot electronic equipment as he strode along the upstairs hallway behind Dara. The girl walked with a purpose that did nothing to tether the womanly sway of her hips. Men came from behind doors with a prepossessed air, shirtsle
eves rolled up. A glimpse inside one room gathered in a wicked little Uzi submachine gun that leaned against a wall.

  The place was busy, taut, and efficient as a battle cruiser, everyone on a hair trigger.

  Major Ethan Rabinovitch, chief of the unit, was a short, bulldoggish man with bitter brown eyes under shaggy brows. He embraced Dara like a father, and she hugged him back. Then they all sat down around the major’s steel desk and talked above the muffled jangle of telephones, clack of typewriters and teletypes, a low hubbub of businesslike voices.

  “What do you think of your new wife, Cajun?” the major asked.

  “She can shoot and she can drive,” Durell replied. “You’ve already found out?”

  Durell told him about the man in the Hertford and the car that had followed them from the hotel. He tossed the dead man’s driver’s license onto the major’s desk.

  “I’ll have a man follow this up,” Rabinovitch said, and dropped the card into his desk drawer. “My apologies for the rude reception. The Arab is getting frisky. Two letter bombs came yesterday. We’ll have to move again, soon.” He spoke matter-of-factly. “Any other problems?”

  Durell looked at Dara, then answered the major’s question. “I don’t believe Miss Allon is suited to the job,” he said bluntly. Dara went rigid and her thin, sharply defined lips opened to protest.

  Rabinovitch cut her off with a wave of his meaty hand, narrowed his dark eyes at Durell: “Why?”

  “She’s too eager.”

  “We like that quality.”

  “My job isn’t to kill Arabs, Major.”

  The major gave a grim smile. He started to say something, but seemed to change his mind. Then he said, “She comes highly recommended.”

  “By whom?”

  “Me.”

  “And you’ve already arranged things with Washington, so there’s no point in arguing it, right?” Durell felt the angry throb of his pulse.

  Rabinovitch switched his gaze to Dara. In the pause that followed, they seemed to communicate with their eyes. Everything in this room, so unlike the comfortable front of the parlor downstairs, seemed made of ice and steel under the fluorescent lighting. Durell heard no street noises and judged the walls to have been fortified and braced, just in case a bomb should be left in a parked car nearby or a satchel charge should be thrown against the building. There were no windows in the room, although there must have been a row of blind openings in the outer wall in order to preserve the innocent appearance of the old town house.