Assignment - Quayle Question (15 page)

There was a bitter pause. “I hate the thought of rogue agents, Samuel.”

“No more than I, sir.”

“How is the old man?”

“He’s dying of cancer of the larynx.”

Another pause. Then McFee said, “And Plowman?” “He’s in the area. I think I can reach him.”

“Can you make him talk?”

“I’ll try, sir.”

McFee clucked. “You know Eli’s methods. Be very careful, Samuel.”

“I try to be.”

“And have Mr. Quayle brought in here to me. He can stay at No. 20 Annapolis. I have an extra bed. It’s important enough.”

Durell hung up. Rufus Quayle had been listening on an extension line.

I’LL GO IN WITH MY OWN PEOPLE.

“As you wish.”

DO YOU THINK ANY OF THE OTHERS IN THIS CRIMINAL GANG ARE STILL HANGING AROUND?

“Where you see one cockroach, you can be sure of others,” Durell said.

TAKE CARE OF DEIRDRE. IF ANYTHING HAPPENS TO DEBORAH—

“Yes, sir.”

THERE IS A WAY OUT OF HERE THAT ONLY DEBORAH AND I AND ROBERT KNOW ABOUT. USE IT. YOU WON’T BE SEEN.

The canal alongside the Ca’d’Orizon seemed to end in the big stone terrace on the west side of the big house. Robert was young and tough, wearing the same dark gray conservative suit the other guards wore. He led them down a mildewed staircase and along a wine cellar with empty racks, touched a small button, and a door slid open to reveal a canal banked with flat stones, reaching into the darkness under the western terrace for a hundred yards.

A powerful launch was tied up to the underground stone dock. The smell of the sea was pungent down here.

“Don’t use the boat’s spotlight until you get into a screen of sawgrass at the other end. I’m turning off. the electronic snoopers to let you get through into the channel. Otherwise you could be gassed or shot, Mr. Durell. The boss uses this private entrance to avoid the press when he wants to come in or go out. You’re not to talk about it, sir. Someone else might look for it and get killed trying to break in.”

Durell looked curiously at the young man. “How long have you been working for Rufus Quayle, Robert?”

“Four years, sir.”

“Do you like him?”

“No, sir.”

“Is he rough on you?”

“He’s a tough old bastard. He’s rough on everybody.” “Then why do you hang on with him?”

“He needs help now, sir. You shouldn’t have said that on the telephone, that he’s dying.”

“Quayle knows it, doesn’t he?”

“Sure, but—”

Robert shrugged and watched Deirdre get into the launch, offered a hand to a glum Marcus who pushed help angrily away, and said, “I’ll take care of your chartered boat. It will be returned in the morning, with the bill paid. Don’t worry about it.”

The motel that Tomash’ta had revealed as Eli Plowman’s headquarters was a dingy place on a crosstown street named after a Western state, to the west of Atlantic Avenue. The night felt clammy. When the fog lifted, Durell thought, it would surely rain. It didn’t matter. Plowman could be waiting for him like a small, fat spider in the middle of a web. Eli would not discount the possibility that Tomash’ta could be taken—and made to talk before he died. The way Eli’s mind usually worked, he might even have anticipated this.

A square block of houses had been razed for urban development across from the motel, and the expanse was still littered with rubble, old lumber, piles of bricks. A wrecking crane stood like a sleeping prehistoric monster amid the piles of equipment and debris. Fog moved in thick tendrils over the open area. The lights of the motel were out, and none of the rooms showed signs of occupancy. Even the office was dark, except for a single gooseneck lamp on the desk, visible through the plate-glass window.

The parking lot behind the row of small, shabby rooms was empty, and there was no way to tell which unit was occupied by Plowman.

Marcus paused beside the back door of the office. “I’ve got a picklock. Let me check the register.” In the gloom, his square face still looked angry. “Be only a minute.”

“Go ahead,” Durell said.

He waited with Deirdre in the gloom behind the motel. A cat scurried across the parking lot. They were three blocks from the Boardwalk and the wide beach that in summer was crammed with tourists. The rectangular masses of the waterfront hotels, built in another era for a different way of life, loomed high against the mist, like one-dimensional cutouts. A single flicker of light came through the glass panel of the office door. A moment later Marcus appeared.

“Number eight,” he said. “There are only three guests —a married couple from South Carolina, and a salesman registered from Pittsburgh. Name of John Tabin. It’s got to be Eli.”

Number eight looked no different from the other doors to the motel rooms. Marcus limped ahead and used his small flashlight to examine the lock.

“It’s a simple Kahn. Any third-rate picklock could do it. Want me to try?”

“Go ahead,” Durell said flatly.

Marcus looked at him from under scowling brows. “Would it be booby-trapped?”

“Could be.”

“How is he armed?”

“You can expect anything.”

“Cajun, listen—you’re sending me in first because you don’t trust me?”

“That’s right.”

“You think I’m a defector, like Henley?”

“I’m not sure,” Durell said.

“You’re a real bastard, you know that?”

“It’s one way to stay alive.”

“And you figure I’m expendable, is that it?”

“Right.”

Marcus shook his head. “A real bastard.” He looked at Deirdre. “I’ve worked with Henley for two years. A good man. I didn’t know he needed Plowman’s money, or whatever it was that made him work for Plowman. Maybe he just liked killing. You never can tell.”

“Go ahead,” Durell said.

Marcus bent to the motel door lock. Durell heard the Kahn tumblers click in less than fifteen seconds. He moved Deirdre to one side, away from the blue-painted door. Marcus paused with his hand flat against the panel. He grinned. “In we go.”

The heavyset man moved almost too quickly for the eye to follow. Gun in hand, Marcus slammed the door open, leaped into the inner darkness, crouched low, waited.

Nothing happened.

There was a peculiar smell in the sparsely furnished room. Incense. Durell drew the draperies, reached carefully for a lamp switch. The room held the impersonality of most motel rooms, a simply furnished cube with bath facilities. The paint was peeling in one comer of the cinder-block wall, where the ceiling leaked. There was only one change of clothing in the open closet, a single pair of small brown shoes, a few shirts in the chest of drawers, and a small travel alarm clock beside the bed. An overnight case that had seen better days and a grimy Pan Am flight bag completed the luggage. Marcus ducked into the bathroom and was gone for a few moments.

“All clean,” he announced.

There was a small clicking sound from the drawer in the night table beside the sagging double bed.

“Not quite,” Durell said. “Get out, Deirdre. Marcus, go with her.”

Marcus stared at the closed drawer; a faint humming had begun, inside. Durell urged Marcus and Deirdre to the door, paused, checked a small broken wire that dangled from the knob.

“Something has been activated.”

“Slow death,” Marcus said, staring at the night table.

“I think not.”

Durell waited until Deirdre was safely outside, then moved silently to the little table. The humming ended with a click as he put his hand on the drawer knob. A muffled voice said,
“Cajun, if you’ve gotten this far, then I have a message for you.”

Marcus spoke from the doorway, “Jesus, we activated a tape recorder.”

“Maybe.”

The voice said,
“Cajun, we have a lot to talk about. Tomash’ta must be dead, or you wouldn’t be here.”
Marcus said, “What a smart-ass. He sounds pretty ordinary to me, though.”

“He isn’t.” Durell opened the drawer with care, listening for any other betraying clicks or activating mechanisms. The machine was simple and inexpensive, in keeping with Eh Plowman’s frugal tastes. The voice was familiar, even through the electronic distortions of the cheap tape.

“Go to the Krishna Maharanda Temple uptown, on the Boardwalk, Cajun. It’s something of a hippie joint, open all night for what the young people think of as meditation. I’ll be waiting there for you.”

Marcus grinned harshly. “Is he serious?”

“Yes. Plowman did his dirty work in the Far East and Southeast Asia for over ten years. He became a Buddhist of sorts.’ Learned all the tricks of the ancient fighting monks and used their temples as safe houses for himself and the assassins he hired.” Durell’s face was grim. “You can’t reconcile his work as a political assassin with such a peaceful religion as Buddhism, though.”

“You going to meet him?” Marcus asked.

“Yes.”

Deirdre stirred. “Sam, I don’t like it. It has to be a trap for you.”

“Quite possibly. But maybe he really wants to tell me something. He’s a rogue agent, remember. Maybe he wants to come back to our side. It must be lonely for him.”

“But you always said he’s so dangerous.”

“He is. But we won’t learn anything unless we go along with this.”

The tape recorder clicked off without any further additions to the message. Durell turned and began examining the room more carefully, using extreme caution. But there did not seem to be any booby traps, lethal explosives, or further messages. He stepped outside, looked up and down the roofed walk that ran alongside the motel room doors. No one was in sight at this hour. The fog persisted, growing even heavier. The air had a raw salt bite to it. A canvas-covered maid’s cart still stood on the walkway by the adjacent room, testimony to the sort of service the motel offered. The curtains to the next room were open, and the cubicle was unoccupied. Durell went to the service cart and looked inside the big canvas bag. There was nothing in it but some towels and an empty liquor bottle.

Deirdre said, “Something?”

“I’m not sure. This place has only two rooms occupied. The towels came from Plowman’s room and were left here when the maid quit for the day.” Durell reached into the bag and picked up the empty bottle. “Yes. Maybe something.”

The bottle was squat and square, somewhat distinctive. The label was unfamiliar. It had held Mexican wine from a small monastery in San Luis de Francesco, Baja California. The date was 1972. The cork was still in it. He sniffed at the fruity odor, looked at the dribble of liquor still in the bottom of the bottle.

“Look at that, Marcus.”

In Spanish, Marcus read, “Prepared by the Maharanda Monks of San Luis de Francesco. So?”

“Plowman wants to meet me at a Maharanda Temple up on the Boardwalk.”

“You think he made a mistake, letting us find this?” “Plowman doesn’t make mistakes. He insists on winning, and always covers his bets. He left sand in my apartment to bring us here, in case the telephone explosive didn’t work. He’s asking me to walk into another trap on the Boardwalk.” Durell shrugged. “And if that doesn’t work, he’s leading me to Baja California.”

Deirdre said, “Maybe that’s where Deborah Quayle is being held a prisoner.”

“Maybe.” Durell nodded. “Call a cab, Marcus.”

He left Deirdre with Marcus, insisting that he had to go alone, and asked the cabbie to wait next to the ramp that led up to the Boardwalk. The lamp posts had great haloes of iridescence around them from the fog. Most of the shops and amusement piers that jutted out into the black ocean were tightly closed and dark. He heard the thin sound of a small drum and a flute from the only lighted area on the wide promenade; he turned that way, keeping close to the boarded-up stores that featured cheap souvenir trinkets, salt-water taffy, auction houses, a quick-sketch portrait place, a bicycle rental shop, a drugstore that featured more junk dolls, pennants, and candy. Farther down the Boardwalk, perhaps two blocks away, was the front arcade of a towering hotel that had seen better and more prosperous days. All of the blinking, winking, eye-dazzling neon signs on the piers had been turned out.

He walked slowly toward the dull, mindless reiteration of a small drum and the piping flutes. A long sliver of yellow light lay diagonally across the Boardwalk, shining through the partially drawn curtains of the Maharanda Temple. There was only a small, crudely lettered sign over the recessed entrance. When he was ten feet away, he came to a halt.

A tall figure in a black robe, tied with a crudely knotted laundry line around the waist, stepped out to meet him.

“Mr. Durell?”

The voice was gentle and peaceful. The young man was very thin and very tall, taller than Durell, with a shaven head except for a scalp-lock that grew into a braided Mandarin pigtail. The young man’s eyebrows were shaven, giving his long, bony face an expressionless appearance. His floor-length robe was made of rough black material, and from his waist dangled a small black kite made of the same material. When he walked toward Durell, the kite leaped up and bobbed erratically a few feet to the rear, catching the faint wind that pushed the fog inland off the sea. The youth paid no attention to the strange appendage moving up and down at his heels.

“Mr. Durell?”

“Yes.”

“You are expected. The new Prophet waits for you.” “Are you talking about Eli Plowman?”

“We do not know him by that name. He came to us from nowhere, and in only a few hours, the Prophet has given us much wisdom. The Brotherhood is grateful.”

“I’ll bet,” Durell said.

The boy seemed harmless and sincere. Inside the alleged temple, the flute and drum went on and on with its inane melody.

“He waits for you over there.” A long bony arm came out of the black robe and pointed toward the nearest amusement pier. “On the beach, lucky pilgrim,” the youth said.

“Thank you.”

The young man bowed and retreated, the black kite shooting up from his heels to over his head, then settling again as he opened the door and vanished inside. Durell waited a moment, looked backward, then crossed the wide Boardwalk to the metal rail overlooking the beach. The few lights on the promenade made only small pools of illumination, which faded into the darkness that reached into the distant surf. The fog seemed even thicker. A ramp led up from the beach to the walkway alongside the pier. A grilled non gate was drawn across the ramp. A flight of steps took him down to the fine, yielding sand. He thought the drum and flute sounded momentarily louder, behind him. The Boardwalk at his back was in darkness. The skin tingled on the nape of his neck. He could see no one on the dark beach. He walked out into the fog, his nerves screaming warnings. Nothing happened. He saw no one on the wide expanse of sand. The breakers made dim white lines that stratified the ocean darkness beyond.