Assignment - Quayle Question (13 page)

“Miss Quayle, you will proceed with the attendant. You will not be blindfolded this time.”

Her mouth formed a denial. “No.”

“Can you hear me, Miss Quayle?”

The voice came through some amplifier; it had a thin metallic quality. There was a pleased, unctuous tone in it. As if some new horror was ready for her, and the fat man could hardly wait to demonstrate it.

“It will do no good to pretend illness. Of course you are ill, sadly. I will not say I regret it. Perhaps you will now realize the seriousness of your unhappy situation. A woman like you has always come to expect happiness, as it is called, as your right. Something you deserve, eh? But you have been extraordinary. You are extraordinary. Blessed with such strange talents, eh?”

She would not reply to the hypnotic, honeyed words. Like the serpent of evil in the Garden of Eden. Through the barred window of her cell, she watched purple shadows move and lengthen across the barren wilderness of the desert. She could not remember the first day she had spent here, after seeing Martin’s mutilated body. She tried to shut out the memory. Nothing moved in the flat plain far below the cell window. The sky remained blue and cloudless. She had been unable to see anything alive down there.

Food had been presented to her on metal trays, slid under the bottom of the heavy planked door. The first day she touched nothing, neither the simple meat and rice, nor the pale yellow wine in its pewter cup. There had been utensils, nothing sharp she could use as a weapon to turn upon herself and end this nightmare. But on the second day of her imprisonment she had fought upward, like a drowning swimmer seeking the pale, glimmering light of air above. She had spent hours minutely examining the environment of her cell, looking and listening, exercising her senses as she had never done before.

The walls were of rough stone and adobe. Some of the plaster was loose, and she could scratch it in thin, powdery flakes from between the blocks of stone. But it would take months, without tools, to work a single block loose from the outer wall. Even then, she suspected that below the cell window there was nothing but a sheer drop of about a thousand feet to the desert floor. She had given up, and ruefully nursed her bleeding fingertips and broken fingernails.

The door was of heavy oak planking, cut to fit the rounded arch at the top. The strap hinges were of roughly, forged iron. There was no handle on the inside, nothing she could grab and shake the door with. No amount of pressure could make the door move measurably.

Now and then the image of Martin’s body and of the gross fat man who had questioned her drifted across her mind. It was like something unspeakably black and wicked. Yes, evil. That old-fashioned word. Satanic, even. A Messenger of Satan. Then her mind formed a denial, insisting on rational thought, and she picked herself up from her slumped position of despair and continued her careful examination of the cell.

It offered nothing.

It certainly offered no hope.

From studying the desert below, she guessed that she might be in New Mexico, or even in the barren desert of Baja California. She could not be certain. But when her searching fingers traced the image of a cross on the middle panel of the cell door, she felt confirmed in her estimate. There had once been a cross of metal fixed to the oak plank, and decades, perhaps centuries, of slow, dry weathering had left its mark, even though the door had been sanded and oiled and refinished not too recently.

Perhaps she was in a monastery somewhere.

But she heard only dull, brazen gongs now and then. Not church bells. Gongs. And through the cell window, where the hot wind of the day blew erratically, as if the air currents were deflected by the shape of the mesa or the form of the building in which she was imprisoned, she had heard chanting, four or five times through the day.

Hardly Gregorian, she thought.

She had heard something similar once when she had traveled with Martin years ago on a business trip to Kuala Lumpur. But this could hardly be Malaysia, or anywhere in the Orient.

There was rattling of the locks on the other side of her cell door.

“You will come to me now,” said the voice. “Please do not make the attendants force you to obey.”

She bowed her head and turned.

“All right,” she whispered.

                             
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“Miss Quayle, have you thought about your father?” 

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I’ve been thinking about Martin.”

“Ah.”

“Of what you did to him. And why you thought it was necessary to kill him so brutally.”

“You truly loved Martin?”

“Yes.”

“And you also love your father, do you not?”

“Yes.”

“But your affection for Rufus Quayle is different?”

“Of course.”

“Because he trained you to work for him?”

“I don’t know what you mean by that.”

“My dear Deborah, Rufuse Quayle recognized your peculiar feats of memory, your ability to correlate and integrate varied data relating to Q.P.I., from the time you were six years old, did he not?”

“He trained me to exaggerate my mental capacities, yes.”

“But you had an inborn gift, true?”

“So people say.”

“From your earliest years, you were trained to memorize various corporate structures, both large and small, within the Q.P.I. organization?”

“It was meaningless to me then.”

“But you developed a capacity for detail and the ability to see relationships between one commercial enterprise and another, almost a gift of industrial development foresight, is that not correct?” “Yes.”

“He came to depend on you as a living, breathing, walking business file?”

“Yes.”

“A living computer?”

“Everyone’s mind can operate as a computer. The most intricate and infinitely developed machine known in the universe. Billions and billions of cells, synapses, neural connections that make our computers look like Tinker toys.”

“But not everyone has developed your abilities?”

“I suppose not.”

“You agree you have an extraordinary talent?”

“If you say so.”

“You are surprised I know this thing about you?”

“Not many people do. My father. Martin did. That’s all.”

“You played the part of the daughter of an extraordinary and eccentric billionaire very well indeed. You lived the
normal
international social life. You belonged to what I believe was once termed the international jet set. Perhaps that term is now outdated. But you trained yourself to present a facade of athletic prowess, of hectic social activity, an international playgirl, so to speak.”

“Yes.”

“All as a coverup for your true talents?”

“Yes.”

“What do you know about the I. Shumata mercantile trading corporation of Nagasaki, Japan?”

“Very little.”

“Why is that?”

“Very little data is available in the open market.”

“Was Martin concerned about I. Shumata?”

“He mentioned it, yes.”

“In what way?”

“It was part of the problem he wanted me to solve.” “Did he tell you what the problem was?”

“No.”

“Can you guess now?” “Yes.”

“Tell me what you guess.”

“I’d rather not.”

“Tell me, Deborah.”

“No.”

“Martin was stubborn. I must remind you.”

“You are a monster.”

“Of course.”

“There are a number of highly influential media networks that consciously or unconsciously mold public opinion one way or the other. They can topple governments. They can work up public anger for war. I am not talking about the large, obvious syndicates and corporate entities such as the London and New York newspapers, the major TV and radio networks. Big as they are, powerful as they are, there are many more small, rural-type networks that in readership and listening and viewing audiences far outnumber and outweigh the impact of the larger groups. My father, Rufus Quayle, saw this at an early age. He went into weeklies, small-town radio stations, independent corporations with perhaps no more than four or five branches. He created a network of his own. He is a wonderful man.”

“Wonderful?”

“He is sincerely patriotic. He is sincerely dedicated to the advance of all human welfare everywhere in the world.” “You speak of Rufus Quayle in the present tense.”

“Why not?”

“You do not think he might be dead?”

“He cannot be dead.”

“Why not?”

“I simply would know it. Or feel it.”

“That is not a rational response.”

“I am sorry. I am still only a human being. And a woman. I grieve for Martin.”

“But Martin divorced you because he claimed you were too rational, too devoid of a woman’s normal emotions.” “You seem to know so much.”

“Not as much as you—at least, about Q.P.I. About the problem that Martin wanted you to solve, and which you say you guessed and perhaps solved for yourself—tell me about I. Shumata.”

“I told you, I don’t—”

“Please be more responsive, Deborah.”

“Am I on trial here?”

“In a way.”

“For my life?”

“Most definitely.”

“I think you’re going to kill me, anyway. You’ll never let me go away from here.”

“I might. If you help me.”

“Why should I help you? I think you are disgusting. You sicken me. You make me angry and sick to my stomach. You revolt me, you great, fat, smiling freak of a creature, you nauseating caricature of a man—”

“You cannot offend me with such childish words. Or pretend to such rage. I see through you, Deborah. You are cold inside. Intellectual. You weigh and measure everything. You analyze all things within your peculiar capacity. As you have analyzed the movement initiated by I. Shumata.”

“To hell with Shumata.”

“Your impatience sounds insincere.”

“And you sound so—so—”

“Evil.”

“Yes.”

“I. Shumata Corporation, Deborah.”

“Well, under cover of swallowing up, through a wide series of violent events that were directed at corporate executives the world over, I. Shumata has undertaken control of various conglomerates that have one major issue in common. Each entity controls , a media outlet, or series of outlets, like Q.P.I. The network is almost complete. Almost world-wide. The great link that is missing is Q.P.I.”

“Ah. Very good. Very, very good.”

“I’m glad you are pleased.”

“We shall get along very well, if you continue this way, Deborah. Now let us have some details.”

                             
****************************************

She was not imprisoned in the chair as she had been during the first term of questioning. She was not bound or blindfolded. The room was the same room in which she had first been interrogated. The same arched, high, roughly plastered ceiling. The same great window that looked out high over the endless desert. She did not look at the big iron hooks embedded in the black beams across the ceiling. She did not look at the hook from which Martin Pentecost’s body had been hung, for her shock and edification.

The man who questioned her was seated on a massive thronelike chair of Spanish design that added a small confirmation to her guess as to the location of this place. He was enormous, with a small bald head and massive belly and thick chest. She could not guess what race or nationality he had sprung from. It was somehow difficult to meet his eyes, and she could not tell their color. He wore a robe of some sort, a saffron-colored tentlike outfit of the hue usually adopted by Buddhist monks and priests. Which fitted, she thought, with the sound of temple gongs she kept hearing in this place that had once been dedicated as a monastery for Catholic priests and monks. Baja California, she thought, somewhere in the interior mountains, away from the coast. It was an area that was still one of the wildest and most remote on the continent.

The small dancing man she had noted before, the one with Oriental manners, was missing in attendance. Two other men stood by passively, behind and below the questioner. It was as if they were symbols chosen to emphasize the ugliness of their master. One was small, slightly hunchbacked, with short bowed legs and a thick thatch of corn-yellow hair that hung low to his shoulders, disheveled and greasy-looking. His face was like a gnarled knot of oak, out of which pale blue eyes leered at her. His companion-guard was monstrous, too, a bearded man with massive shoulders and long, muscular arms, who eyed her in a way she did not like, as if weighing her like a professional butcher in a slaughterhouse. She wondered which of them had killed Martin. Probably both. Inwardly, she shuddered.

She thought her inquisitor might be Eurasian. His swarthy skin was not Indian or Hindu or Latin, but a mixture of all, with the merest trace of the epicanthic fold at the corners of his eyes that gave him his Eastern appearance. She looked away from the trio and down at the worn, intricately tiled floor. This room might have been a chapel once dedicated to God. A place for worship and divine prayers. It had been turned into a charnel house for her, dedicated to inhuman brutality. . . .

                             
****************************************

“Your ring, Miss Quayle.”

“What?”

“On your right hand.”

“Oh. What about it?”

“It seems a bit unusual.”

“My father gave it to me, when I was sixteen.”

“Can you take it off?”

“I’m afraid not. I’ve never taken it off, and now I can’t.”

“The ring has great emotional significance to you?”

“My father gave it to me.”

“It is a pretty little thing.”

“Yes. No more than that.”

“Of not much intrinsic value?”

“The sapphires are small. The gold is nineteen carats. It’s worth less than a thousand dollars, if you’re interested.”

“But it’s sentimental value, I assume, is without price?” “To me, yes.”

“Rufus Quayle would recognize it if he saw it again?” “He once said he was pleased that I always chose to wear it.”