Assignment - Quayle Question (19 page)

The monk, with his robe and his kite, would be the only human being able to pass through such barriers on his way back to the Maharanda winery.

Durell slipped into the monk’s robe quickly, adjusted the ring and rope belt and kite to his own frame. Again, he was delayed by the need for care.

“Can you tie him up, Vincente?”

“Yes. I can lock him in the cellar. I am glad you did not kill him, señor.”

“Be careful. He’ll kill you, if he can.”

Durell stared out of the storeroom behind the cantina. At the same moment, someone came in through the front entrance facing the plaza.

It was Marcus. His face was battered and bloody. He staggered as he walked.

“Cajun?”

“It’s me,” said Durell, wearing the robe.

“Oh, Jesus. Cajun, they came to the hotel. They got Deirdre. They took her away. I’m sorry, Sam. I’m sorry.”

“Sit up straight, Deborah.” “Yes.”

“Look at me, please.”

“I can’t.”

“Am I so ugly, then?” “You’re all ugly.”

“Look at me.”

“Deborah, is this her picture?”

“I don’t know.”

“Surely you recognize your own cousin?”

“I haven’t seen her for years and years.”

“Come, come.”

“It’s the truth.”

“This is Deirdre Padgett, is it not?”

“If you say so.”

“This is not a proper answer. I must confess, I grow totally impatient with you. You have delayed and lied and offered me nothing, in exchange for my kindness to you.” 

“Kindness?”

“You are alive, are you not?”

“Without my finger.”

“Ah. It still hurts?”

“No.”

“You had excellent medical treatment.”

“Have you sent it—sent it to my father?”

“You told us he was at Ca’d’Orizon, did you not?”

“Yes. But I added that it was just an educated guess. I can’t be sure.”

“But it took you several days to decide to tell us that.

And now our quarry has flown.”

“I’m glad.”

“Glad?”

“He’s my father. I don’t want him killed or hurt by your monsters.”

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

She felt as if everything had been harvested now from the fields of her mind. She was empty and drained of everything she had owned, all that she had been. She would never be the same. With her head bowed, seated in the same chair, before the table on which her finger had been severed and the ring taken from her, she felt an exhaustion of mind and spirit from which she would never rise. For a day and a night she had remained in shock, confined to her cell. She heard the chanting of the Maharanda monks from a distance. The striking of various gongs marked the hours that drifted by. She slept and dreamed and woke to find the stub, where her finger used to be, bandaged, the pain eased. She had been questioned again, and this time she had allowed the replies to come out, knowing it was all being taped, knowing that the capacities of her brain were being leached bit by bit, grain by grain. She had talked about Q.P.I. and Martin and most of all about Rufus Quayle. Finally she had told them about the canal that went underground, under the wide sweep of terrace behind the house. And how Rufus had told her he would die in that house.

She was changed. There was a listlessness to her spirit that she had never known before. Her life-long dedication to her father and his enterprises, using her unique talents, had come to an end. She felt she had betrayed everything that gave meaning to her life.

“Look at me, Deborah.”

He was monstrous, in a flowing yellow robe, with tiny feet, his shaven head shining in the light from the window that looked out high over the empty desert. Yes, she

thought, there was something innately evil, a malice that seemed unearthly, in him. Her mind rebelled weakly against accepting this, and she felt enslaved by this creature who called himself Dr. Mouquerana Sinn. She was beginning to accept him and his long quiet talks, laced with acid amusement, that defined him as a Messenger of Satan, a harbinger of open wickedness to the world. As if the world wasn’t wicked enough, she thought bitterly. It was true, as Sinn argued, that man called upon God to relieve humanity of war and hatred and bigotry and natural devastations; and so often, God did not seem to respond. You could rationalize it in many ways, searching for a greater good to come from mankind’s barbarity; but such goodness was difficult to find. You were urged to have faith. Faith, she thought dully, had not helped her. A cry to heaven had not saved Martin. It would not save herself.

Rings flashed and flickered in heavy jewelry on Dr. Sinn’s short, fat fingers. He was vain. He was contemptuous. Most of all, there was no end to his cruelty.

His guards were scarcely better, those two omnipresent companions who stood behind Sinn’s thronelike chair and stared at her with small, unwinking eyes. Most of all she feared the one called Antipholus, as if he were the Devil’s right hand. He was the one who had calmly, swiftly amputated her finger. He looked at her strangely, she thought. Now and then his face betrayed an odd, flickering smile. She looked back at him like a bird caught in the hypnotic stare of a serpent. He wore a short tunic over his great barrel chest, and very tight trousers of thin white cotton that ended in elastic just below the heavy knees. His genitals bulged enormously under the flimsy white cloth. She looked away. She sat up straighter and let her eyes go out of focus, so that she seemed to be meeting Dr. Sinn’s stare, but kept him in a blurred haze.

                             
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“Ah. Better, Deborah.”

“Yes. What more do you wish to know?*'

“Would your cousin Deirdre Padgett recognize you, if she saw you now?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Is there any way you could identify yourself to her so she would be convinced of your own identity?”

“I could tell her my name.”

“Nonsense. Do not anger me with simplicities.”

“I could tell her some details of how we first met at Ca’d’Orizon, on that Thanksgiving Day.”

“Ah.”

“I could describe her parents.”

“Better.”

“And some things that were said at the table." 

“Yes.”

“Are you going to bring Deirdre here, too?”

“She is already here, my dear. Do you know her fiance, this man named Sam Durell?”

“No. I know nothing, really, about her life.”

“A dangerous man. Thanks to your tardiness in speaking frankly, thanks to your delay in being responsive to my questions, we have lost a few small skirmishes with the forces opposing us. It is an irritation. I am really very angry with you, Deborah.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You will be sorrier.”

“Please don’t hurt me anymore. Let me go.’*

“Had you been cooperative, had your father Rufus Quayle agreed to our terms and given up Q.P.I., it would have been better for you. I mean to own Q.P.I., do you understand? Have you realized that yet?”

“Yes, I know that now.”

“Do you still think your obstinacy has been worth it?” “No, I don’t.”

“Would you sign over Q.P.I. to me?”

“I would, if I could. If I had the authority.”

“Indeed.”

“Don’t hurt me again.”

“You need another small lesson, Deborah.
⁵¹
“Oh, please!”

“Yes, yes. I am very angry with you. You have caused me delays, the loss of two—perhaps three—excellent aides. Your female cousin and this man Durell have been most persistent in seeking me out, trying to save you. But they shall not succeed.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I cannot hear you. Do not whisper, Deborah.”

“I’m afraid.”

“I am going to give you to Antipholus. He has developed a curious affection for you, watching you this past week or two. You may not survive his attentions.”

“What more can I tell you?"

“Ah. First a whisper. Now a shout. Good, good. You have been unresponsive for too long. Antipholus, you may take her.”

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

What had been a nightmare before was now compounded a hundred times over. She had come to accept physical abuse, slaps and kicks, the sight of Martin hanging from the hook in the ceiling, the amputation of her finger. It was as if she had been here for an eternity, and had grown accustomed to this slavish way of life, to the constant hammering on her mind, the slow draining of her personality until she had become as slavish as a whipped bitch, cowering and drooling for pity.

Now, as the huge, gross attendant came toward her, she felt such a burst of revulsion at what was coming that she pushed back the chair and sprang to her feet. His big paw shot out and caught her arm and twisted it cruelly, toning her so that she fell on all fours to the rough stone floor of the chamber. Her hair swung down before her eyes, blinding her. Suddenly she felt choked as his fingers caught in the cloth of the yellow smock she had been given to wear. There was a ripping sound as he tore the garment from her. For a moment she was released. She sprang upright and ran across the long room to the window overlooking the desert. Naked, her body still proud, she turned and looked at the man. He stood a short distance from her, a crooked smile on his obscene face. Behind him, still seated in his big chair, Dr. Mouquerana Sinn watched with all the objectivity of a botanist pinning a butterfly to a display board.

“No, please,” she moaned.

This proud body of hers, that she had used with such pleasure and skill with Martin, that had been honed to a fine athletic point, was greedily devoured by the man’s eyes. He looked at her breasts, her navel, her hips.

“Please.”

Slowly he untied the cord that held his tight breeches up on his bulging belly. He let them fall to the stone floor. She felt a scream rise in her throat, strangling her. He was a freak. He was enormous. The lift and extension of his organ was unnatural, bringing terror to her that was like a paralyzing wave of ice in her belly. She shrank away. She could not take her eyes from him. He would kill her. He would tear her apart. It was the ultimate violation, the final pain, that Dr. Sinn had reserved for her.

“Wait,” she gasped. “Tell me what I can do. Anything. Make him go away.”

No one answered her. Dr. Sinn leaned forward in his big chair, and his eyes looked avid, alight with amusement. His gross body, like a giant toad’s, was turned to observe her. There was no one to help. No one. There was nothing she could do.

As the naked man reached for her, she darted to one side, flattened against the cold glass pane of the big window. She smashed backward at the glass with her elbows, trying to break it. Escape into death by throwing herself down to the desert floor, a thousand feet below, was better than this obscene humiliation, this inevitable death in itself.

The glass would not break.

She kicked it with her naked feet, hammered at it with her fists. She whirled, looking about for something that might help. She saw the chair she had been sitting on, darted for it, picked it up, tried to fling it at the window. The huge man caught it in mid-air, brushing it aside as if it were a twig. And then he had her arm and swung her about, threw her to the floor and stood over her, swollen and ready.

Her heart thundered in her ears. His knees came down ponderously between her thighs, forcing them apart. She felt a bursting sensation inside her, and she began to scream a protest at what was being done to her. The sound was as primitive as that of any helpless animal caught in a jungle by a predatory beast.

There was no trace of Deirdre or her captors on the trail over the desert to the monastery, high on the bluff above. The daylight had faded, although the sky was still pale against the first stars. Already the chill of the desert had begun to set in, and a small wind piped through the sage and cactus struggling to grow in the sandy plain.

Durell walked with a long stride, the bell tinkling, the kite bobbing and darting and leaping high over his head, a small black appendage that he hoped would act as the key to unlock the protective network around the monastery high on the mesa. He tried not to think of Deirdre or what had happened. Marcus had said they had come in fast, three of them, dressed in the same robes he now wore himself.

He wondered if the odds against him might not be pitched too high.

Obviously, the people in the monastery knew about him and about Deirdre’s presence in the village. And if they knew about Marcus, they also knew about the fake hippies with their vans parked in the plaza.

But he could not change his plans now. He closed his mind to what might be happening to Deirdre at this very moment. He walked quickly, but not too quickly that the devices monitoring his approach on the single road to the winery could arouse suspicion. He wanted to run. He could not. He made himself go on with a steady, long stride that matched—he hoped—the gait of the monk whose robe he now wore.

The trail had been used by trucks going and coming to the monastery, and it lifted upward toward the mesa by a series of tedious switchbacks, climbing every foot of the way. His bell tinkled. The kite bobbed overhead, darted to the left, swung to the right. He could feel its erratic tug on the rope that tied his robe around the waist. Behind him, the village was already lost in dark shadows. The wind whispered in the cactus, blew sand in dark dust devils against his face. It would be dark by the time he reached the top of the mesa. A low sickle moon hung over the eastern horizon, above the mountains on the other side of the peninsula. The winery loomed high above, seeming to cling to the very edge of the flat-topped mountain. He could see no lights up there. There was a dome at one end, surmounted by a wooden Spanish cross that had never been removed when the monks left long ago. Probably there was an interior courtyard, in the Latin style. He kept his head down, watching the old ruts left by the winery trucks. There were no vehicles in evidence now.