Assignment - Quayle Question (10 page)

Durell opened the door. The apartment was a shambles, filled with acrid smoke. There was a hole in the desk, another in the wall near where the phone had been. If he had picked it up and held it to his ear, it would have blown his head off.

“Come on,” he told Deirdre.

He took her hand and they went quietly down the stairs to the street lobby.

Marcus and Henley were just coming through the lobby doors from the street. Henley had a peculiar expression on his narrow, scholarly face. Durell kept going, and Marcus said, “What’s happening up there? What in hell was that noise?”

“Nobody’s hurt. Where did you come from?”

“McFee told us to keep an eye on you.” Henley stared upward. “It sounded like a bomb, Cajun.”

“It was. Have you a car?”

“We’ve been sitting in it all night. McFee thought you might be up to something on your own.”

Durell led Deirdre out into the street. The two DIA men followed. Henley kept looking backward. Off in the distance, a police siren sounded.

The car was a nondescript Buick at least ten years old. Henley took the wheel. The engine ticked over like a watch. “Where to, Sam?”

“National. You’ll do the flying.”

Half an hour later, they were airborne, heading east over the Chesapeake and then north across the Delmarva Peninsula and over the Delaware across the fiat scrub pines of southern Jersey. By three o’clock that afternoon they touched down at Bader Field and by four they had registered at a Boardwalk hotel and made arrangements for renting a powerboat at the inlet fishing docks between Absecon Island and Brigantine.

The afternoon was cool, with a thin layer of high clouds over the sun. There were few tourists at this season of the year. Deirdre had taken a packaged lunch from the hotel, and Marcus brought two bottles of bourbon. The tide was coming in. In the grassy channels that twisted northward toward Tom’s River in a maze of watery paths, the sun was obscured by tall reeds, and the scent of ozone was sharply penetrating in the cool breeze. The wind came from the east, over the Atlantic. Seagulls followed them hopefully, screaming in protest when they found no scraps of bait in their wake. A sport fisherman with a black hull and high white superstructure came their way, and the man piloting from the flying bridge waved to them, his eyes hidden behind large sunglasses. Durell pushed the throttle forward and their wake washed into the six-foot high reeds on the sand banks to right and left of the channel.

It was an area where land and sea met and blended in a manner that left it hard to define water, air, and land. The tidal flats smelled pungent. Deirdre passed around sandwiches against the growing chill in the air. There were few horizons among the meandering salt-water creeks. Now and then a leaning pole indicated the course to follow. The gulls left them. Once, crossing a wider channel that might have been a small river, they glimpsed the mainland as a dim line of scrub pines and a wooden trestle bridge carrying a road north and south. To the east glimmered the slate-gray reaches of the Atlantic Ocean. “Anything familiar?” Durell asked Deirdre.

She shook her head. “It was a long time ago, Sam.” Marcus said dubiously, “Nobody’s at the Rufus Quayle place. I hear it was abandoned and ruined years ago. Even if the old bastard is there, you’ll never get in to talk to him.”

“That’s what I want to see.”

A small crab boat with an open cockpit passed them, heading south. The fisherman called something that was lost in the wind. The tall reeds and grass-covered dunes blocked out the horizons again. The wind was sharper, and Deirdre hugged herself as she stood beside Durell at the wheel of the chartered boat. The channel twisted northwest, turned south, came to a fork that broadened into a wider inlet. A fishing shack with gray weathered shingles stood on stilts at the intersection of the waterways. A sign tilted to one side, in faded, weatherbeaten letters, read:

NO TRESPASSING

PRIVATE PROPERTY

Durell took the prohibited channel and throttled down. They were going north again. The sky had turned a dark gray in the east, but there was still a watery glimmer of sunlight over the mainland, which lay at least six miles to the west, beyond the tidal marshes. Half a mile onward, they saw a second sign:

WARNING!

RESTRICTED

It was in slightly better repair than the first. A small pier lay collapsed among the high reeds, the stilt poles canted every which way. Durell glimpsed metal or glass among the tall grasses growing on the tidal dunes. A narrow path had been cut through the growth, leading back over the dune and out of sight. He looked at the other bank, nosing the boat forward at slow speed. Again, no one was in sight.

For a time they could see nothing but the gray skies and murky waters of the swift tidal channel. The boat handled well. Henley stretched out in the cockpit, took off his horn-rimmed glasses, and closed his eyes; Marcus took a slug of the bourbon and ate the last of the sandwiches.

A third sign, with reflector letters, stood in the very center of the passage:

DANGER! DANGER!

  NO TRESPASSERS ALLOWED

Marcus said, “We’re getting closer, but I don’t see anybody or anything.”

“Look over there,” Durell said. “To right and left.” He slowed the boat. “There in the grass. And there, where those poles stick up. Electronic beams, crossing the channel.”

“Hell. You think they’re activated?”

“We’ll soon find out.”

The sun was almost down, but a high gray light persisted in the colorless sky. A herring gull flew over them, winging purposefully west over the miles of flat water, dune, and tidal creek. Sandpipers ran on stilt legs along a tongue of sand beside the channel. A fish splashed in the waters ahead. Durell suddenly cut the boat’s engine and faced astern. “Did you hear that?”

Henley, lying on his back with his hands supporting his scholarly head, kept his eyes closed. “It’s another boat, Sam. They’ve been following us for about five minutes.” The boat rocked silently in the current. “I wasn’t sure until you cut the engine.” Henley opened his eyes, put on his glasses, and took his gun from the pocket of his short quilted jacket. “Do we wait here?”

“No,” Durell decided.

He started the engine and they went on. Deirdre looked at him, but he said nothing more. The channel turned abruptly to port, and for a moment they glimpsed something large and hulking against the dark eastern sky. At the same time, Durell heard distant surf on the beach and smelled an increasing sharpness from the ocean.

A wire fence, built across the channel on solid pilings, blocked their way. A freshly painted metal sign read:

  YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

  DANGER!

 THIS IS A FIRING RANGE!

“Marcus?”

“Yo.”

“See if you can find wire-cutters in the toolbox.”

Henley said, “It looks like a gate, but it’s padlocked.” Deirdre said, “Someone is coming.”

Durell let the boat drift toward the blockade across the

channel. A high sandbank, overgrown with sawgrass, reached almost fifteen feet above their heads from the deck of the boat. There was a sharp burst of sparks as the metal fittings on the bow pulpit touched the fence. The wires were electrified. Deirdre bit her lip. At the same moment, there was the sharp crack of a rifle, and a bullet whipped across their bow.

Henley rolled off the transom and raised his gun. Marcus ducked aft into the cockpit, his own weapon ready.

A bullhorn spoke to them.

“You people are intruders. This is private property! You have been warned. Turn back!”

Durell looked up at the high sandy bank to starboard. Nothing else happened. The boat drifted against the electrified barrier again. More sparks showered over the bow. The electronic voice spoke again.

“You people are intruders! This is private property! You have been warned. Turn back!”

Durell said, “It’s a tape recording. Triggered to go off if the gateway is touched. There’s no one on guard.”

“But someone fired a shot at us,” Deirdre said.

He nodded. The boat slid aground on the sandy shore with a deep grating noise. The deck canted a little. “Marcus, see anybody?”

Henley said, “He’s moving. A bit to the right of the highest tuft of sawgrass. Over there. Astern.”

“Do you hear the other boat now?”

“No.”

Durell said, “I’m going ashore. Stay here, Dee. You too, Henley. Marcus, come with me.”

He jumped for the steep embankment that sloped overhead, slid downward a little, touched the rail of the boat, and shoved himself upward again, gripped a clump of rough grass, climbed, found a foothold, and paused with his head just below the crest of the grassy dune. Although he was only ten feet or so above the deck of the boat’s flying bridge, the advantage of this height gave him a sweeping view to the west and south. The antenna of another boat among the marsh reeds caught the last beams of sunlight and reflected it in a thin, upright thread of bright metal. It was about a quarter of a mile behind them. Marcus jumped from the deck for the embankment after him. Henley stood beside Deirdre while Marcus clambered up beside him.

“Did you know we were being followed for the last two hours, since we left the hotel, Sam?”

“Yes.” Durell lifted his head carefully above the crest of the dune and looked through the high grass on top. The sound of the ocean surf was louder here. He could see the Atlantic, darkening by the moment, directly ahead, and the surf made long white combers on a wild-looking stretch of sand beach overgrown with wild plum and seagrape. To the right, where Atlantic City lay many miles behind them, there was a faint glow in the evening sky. The sea wind blew sand against his cheek. He looked the other way and saw Ca’d’Orizon.

It was half a mile northward, a stone and clapboard structure of ominous bulkiness, with a ruined tower to the south end, nearest him, and a crenellated wall around the flat roof of the rest of the structure. A vista of dunes and a few wind-bent pines intervened between here and the building. There was a brooding sense of lonely isolation in the imitation palazzo. It stood on a rise of about six feet. The narrow Gothic windows were tightly boarded up. He tried to see how the land ran toward the palazzo, but the tangle of seagrape and high grasses blocked most of the view. He saw where jetties had been thrust into the surf to build up the sand. There were two sets of them, made of pilings and gray rocks, and he guessed these were outlets for the canals dug to satisfy Rufus Quayle’s whims. There should be some bridges, he thought, over the waterways.

Directly ahead on the other side of the dune, the electrified fence that crossed the boat channel was continued across the width of the island. Beyond was another fence of barbed wire. He wondered briefly if there might be land mines. Anything was possible. There was an air of unreality about the huge house that seemed to float on a thin layer of mist that crept in among the dunes from the sea.

Marcus moved uneasily beside him.

Just then a second rifle shot clipped the top of the dune and spattered sand against Durell’s cheek. The flat sound of the weapon was whipped away by the darkening wind. He looked to the right, where the surf curled in long pale lines against the beach. A clump of gnarled pines and a low barrier of seagrape made a kind of demarcation line across the island.

“Come on,” he told Marcus.

He went over the crest of the dune in a quick, lithe movement, ran in a crouch down the opposite slope of sand and grass. Marcus kept pace with him. Durell ran straight for the spot among the seagrape where he thought the sniper was hidden. The sound of the surf was louder in his ears. Halfway to the line of brush he threw himself flat on the cold, yielding sand. A slight movement betrayed the rifleman. There was a brief glint of watery light on a rifle barrel. A third shot whined harmlessly overhead.

Marcus gasped. “He’s pretty good. Can you see him?” “It’s not one of Quayle’s guards. They’d give us a chance to explain our trespassing.”

“Tomash’ta, then? I’d like to get that son of a bitch.” Marcus looked angry.

Durell said, “Swing around the left along the channel and keep him busy. I’ll take him from the front.”

The DIA man nodded and slid away behind the dune, then got up and ran. Immediately there were two more shots and Marcus jerked and fell down, vanishing in the tall grass. Durell sprang up and sprinted for the seagrape. Something tugged at his shirtsleeve and he dived, rolling forward, and came up into the prickly tangle of brush. He waited a moment, thought he heard Marcus off to his left, then crawled along the edge of the channel. He came up against the electrified wire barrier, saw where the seagrape had grown up against it, rolled the brittle branches forward, then lifted himself up and over on the brush, coming up on hands and knees on the other side. He looked for Marcus, but could not see him. Behind and to the left, the channel water murmured softly with the tide. The rank smell of marsh gas touched him. Ahead, the gloomy pile of Ca’d’Orizon loomed against the darkening sky. There was no more than twenty minutes of daylight left. He looked back along the channel and saw the boat, but he did not see Deirdre or Henley on deck.

A two-foot trough formed by seawater running to the beach on the outgoing tide had been furrowed out of the island’s surface. He rolled forward into it, moved rapidly back to the right again where the sniper had been hidden.

Something made a burst of movement amid the brush and scrub pines. At the same moment, he heard the crash of Marcus’s gun. The running figure zigzagged, leaped high over a second fence, splashed through shallow sea-ware, reached a second dune and vanished. Durell moved forward toward the surf. His purpose was to edge the man out toward the flat expanse of open beach, where the tides had exposed flats of sand free of the tall grasses. The furrow he had been using flattened out a few feet farther on. From behind him, he heard Deirdre call.

“Sam? Sam!”

The wind snatched her voice away. The crash of the surf erased a second cry. He looked back briefly, then went on. Now he saw another barrier on the way to the big, sprawling house. It was the first of the two channels he had seen from the top of the dune behind him. The water did not look too deep. He slid down into it in a small avalanche of sand. The tidal water was icy cold. It came up to his knees. He splashed through it, climbed the other bank, and ran for the open beach. To his right he saw another figure, small and quick, racing for the safety of the trees inland.