Assignment - Quayle Question (5 page)

“Is it legitimate?” Durell asked.

“Oh, he did it himself, all right. With his own hand. Could never understand how these Japanese in olden times could do it. A matter of redeeming honor, of course. He was not killed, Durell. He did it to himself.”

Marcus said, “Not too long ago, either.”

Durell's mind jumped to a conclusion, rejected it, sought another. It was neither accident nor coincidence that Akuro had chosen this moment to appease the demands of honor. He straightened, studied the rustic room, saw two bedroom doors, kept his gun ready. The nearest room was empty. The bed had been turned down, with smooth linen sheets, ready for the night. It had been intended as the master bedroom, for Akuro and his wife. He saw the woman’s kimono in the half-open closet, stood flat against the wall beside the closet door, toed it open, ready for an eruption of violence.

Nothing.

An empty closet.

He came out and saw that Henley and Marcus had not touched Yoshi Akuro’s kneeling body. The second bedroom door was locked. “Marcus? A job for you. Quietly, now. We don’t want to raise hell with the Spa’s staff.”

“There will be hell enough when they find this,” Marcus grumbled. “It’s a shitty piece of work, all right. It’ll make all the papers, coast to coast. In Japan, too.”

“No, it won’t. They’ll keep it quiet,” Durell said.

“You know something we don’t know, Sam?”

“A little.”

Marcus opened the second bedroom door. It had a simple ward lock. They all stood back, protecting themselves, thinking of another booby trap.

The door opened with a small squeak of hinges.

Nothing happened.

The place was like a charnel house.

Three more bodies were scattered about the small cottage bedroom. The woman, a slender Japanese matron in a thin yellow robe, had been shot in the back of the head; she had fallen forward, her face still wearing an expression of concern, as if she had been listening for what had taken place in the living room. Durell had heard no shots; there was no sign of alarm in the hotel. A silencer had been used, then.

The other bodies were of children: a twelve-year-old boy and a four-year-old girl, in formal Japanese costumes that made them look like the dolls carved in the northern provinces of Japan. But they were not attractive. The explosive force of the bullets in the back of their heads had rendered their faces as ugly and grotesque caricatures of human features.

Marcus said, “The son of a bitch.”

Durell said, “Check the desk in the living room. I saw some papers there.”

“Right.”

“Henley, wipe for fingerprints. We don’t want to get involved publicly.”

“Check.”

It was plain what had happened. Tomash’ta, whose vicious immorality was clear in his past record when he had worked for Eh Plowman, had forced the victim first to sign over his interests in I. Shumata
zaibatsu
, under threat of harm to his family locked in the bedroom; then he had been forced to commit suicide in the traditional Japanese manner. That done, Tomash’ta had then cold-bloodedly murdered the wife and children to remove them as witnesses.

Durell checked his thoughts.

“Marcus. Henley. Akuro had three children.”

“Right, Cajun.”

“So where is the third? A ten-year-old girl.”

“Yes.”

Durell checked the luggage and closets. There was a small suitcase, a drawerful of Western clothing designed for a ten-year-old girl. Her name, Durell remembered, was Kabuye. He had checked out photographs of the entire family before coming here to head off Tomash’ta.

The middle child was missing.

Henley held some papers taken from the desk. “Just business reports. No sign-over of anything, Cajun.”

“I want the other child,” Durell said.

Henley shrugged. “Maybe Tomash’ta took her.”

Marcus said, “Is he one of those creeps?”

“No,” Durell said. “I think he missed her.”

At that moment, he heard a small girl’s voice calling from outside the cottage.

There was a plaintive, wailing note to the words that he could not understand. A hint of forced terror, of sobbing fear. Durell snapped off the torch he was carrying, drew his gun, waved the other two men aside, and went to the front door, paused a moment, then stepped down to the darkened gloom of the cottage veranda.

The path from the cottage steps led upward to a small footbridge over the brook, disappearing into the lawn and shrubbery toward the main building, a hundred yards away. Something moved on the path across the bridge.

“Durell-san?”

The child, incredibly, knew his name. He saw her clearly for a moment in the distant light from the lawn lamp post, clad in a white kimono, her slippered feet moving her reluctantly toward the small footbridge. Her voice quavered with fear.

“Durell-san?”

He did not hear the sound of the shot that came from about twenty paces to the left of the child. The muzzle flare betrayed its location at the same moment that he dived forward off the veranda. Glass crashed from a window broken in the cottage. Durell rolled, felt a jolt in his ribs as he came up against a rock, and then he was running, sheltered by a tall azalea hedge that bordered the walk. A second shot tore leaves down around his head. From behind him came Marcus’s curse, a thick angry voice. He got up and dodged toward the brook, slid down the embankment into knee-deep, icy water. He kept the gun up, ready; but he could not see a target. The child was crying somewhere off to the right. He could not see her on the path now because of the steep, rough embankment made by the brook that flowed down toward the culvert in the brick wall. He moved that way, with the current, for a dozen paces, saw a handhold, and pulled himself up the bank. This time he heard a phut! phut! as two shots came at him in rapid succession from the silenced gun. Dirt spattered in his eyes. He went flat, crawled forward, saw a shadow move, started to raise his gun, checked himself. It was only a branch. He stood up behind a thick maple and looked carefully to the right and left. Nothing. The massive domelike roof of the enclosed swimming pool loomed beyond a stretch of two tennis courts and a bit of lawn. To the right and higher than this spot, he heard Marcus run toward the child. He could tell it was Marcus from the man’s heavy, undisguised footfalls.

Something splashed in the brook behind him. Light glinted on Henley’s professorial face.

“Get up here,” Durell whispered.

“Where is he?”

“He’s good. I can’t find him.”

“Tomash’ta?”

“Who else?” Durell was irritable. “He found the girl, who probably was out in the main hall when the killings were done. He sent her back here for me.”

“For you?”

“She called my name.”

“How would Tomash’ta know your name, Cajun?”

“I’d like the answer to that, too.”

There were no further shots. Henley slid away to the left, holding his gun thrust forward as if he were standing on a target range. He vanished into the gloom. Durell stepped onto the path. He felt angry, impatient. He offered himself for the hidden Tomash’ta’s gun, but nothing more happened. The man was gone; his ambush attempt was a failure.

He turned to the child.

Marcus was trying to comfort her.

Durell spoke to her in Japanese. “Who told you to call my name?”

The girl looked at him. “A man. A man from Nippon. He said he was my father’s friend. I don’t like this place. I don’t like you. I want to see my father.”

“Later,” Durell said.

Marcus said, “Jesus, Sam, what do we do with her?” “Take her up to the main hall and leave her there.” “She’s in shock, sort of.”

“It’s only the beginning. Did you see Tomash’ta?” “Nobody. Just the kid here. Where’s Henley?”

“Scouting around. He’ll be back soon. Tomash’ta is gone. Probably took our own route, through the culvert.” “And we let him go, just like that?”

Durell looked at the dark wooded flanks of the narrow valley. “Yes. This time. When you get back from the main hall, head for the van.”

“I’m not a baby-sitter,” Marcus objected.

Durell looked at the frightened little Japanese girl.

“Try it, just this once. It won’t hurt.”

The DIA man looked at him from under heavy, angry brows. “What kind of people do you guys from K Section play 'around with?”

“We’re not playing,” Durell said. “This one is for keeps.”

He did not want to admit the depth of his worry over Deirdre’s disappearance. If Tomash’ta knew his name, he knew Deirdre, too; probably knew all about her, perhaps he had come upon her in the hippie van—

He didn’t want to think about it.

All at once he began to move, cursing his own carelessness. As he ran up the narrow road behind the hotel, he saw the first flicker of fire from the spot high above, where he had found the flowered van and left it for later. He felt a terrible fear that he might be too late. One day he would find Tomash’ta and kill him. It wouldn’t do any good. It would not bring Deirdre back to him. He had been warned of her possible danger, but he had thought her safe enough, alone in the van, while he had been waiting for the Porsche. But nothing could be taken for granted in this business. If the worst came to worst, he would quit, after he settled with Tomash’ta. Then he knew that this sort of thinking would do no good, either

to himself or to Deirdre, if anything could still help her, and he stopped considering alternatives while he ran uphill along the rutted mountain road.

The van was burning.

Tomash’ta had gotten here ahead of him.

The glare of the fire fit up a wide area of the back road. Durell halted in the shadows at the rim of the flame-lighted area. One of the windows of the van had been blown out, and the ragged flowery curtains were ablaze, blowing in the mountain wind. His first thought was to get away, since the fire would surely ring a local alarm and bring people here, with questions he did not care to answer. He searched the brush carefully. Tomash’ta might still be nearby, waiting for another chance at him.

The dry autumnal brush wavered in shadow-patterns all around him. Already some of the weeds beside the road were burning where spilled gasoline had run into the brush. The whole mountainside was explosive at this time of the year. The wind shifted slightly and blew acrid smoke around him. He pinched his nostrils. There was a ditch alongside the gravel road that crossed slantwise along the brow of the mountain ridge. A clump of hemlocks moved in firelit patterns, stirred by the wind. A heavy outcrop of rock lifted perpendicularly on the other side of the area occupied by the van. He tried to remember Deirdre’s last words on the radio transmission. They gave him no clue.

Someone thrashed through the brush downhill toward him. Durell tightened the grip on his gun. Then he saw it was Franklin, whom he had left on the other side of the valley. The FBI man’s stubby figure moved with desperate pain, hobbling along. He had hurt his leg or ankle. His pudgy face was screwed up by his effort to make progress.

Durell stepped from the brush. “Take it easy, Franklin.”

“God damn it, is that you, Cajun?”

“What happened to you?”

“I slipped. Couldn’t keep up with you and those DIA men. Where are they?”

“Coming. Is anything broken?”

“I don’t think so. Have you seen Deirdre? Is she with you?” Franklin’s voice was anxious. “Who set the van on fire? Was it you?”

“No. Deirdre hasn’t shown up yet, either.”

“She should be somewhere around,” Franklin said.

Durell nodded. The question was whether Deirdre was still alive, or lying dead and broken, another of Kokui Tomash’ta’s victims. But Tomash’ta had been working alone down in the Spa. And Durell had followed him closely up this road in the wilderness of the mountain ridge. If the killer had tied her up, intending to take her with him as a hostage after he dealt with Akuro, there wouldn’t have been time for him to pick her up.

“Help me look along this ditch,” he said to Franklin.

“I can’t get around too well.”

“Do what you can.” Durell’s voice was tight. “Marcus and Henley will be along in a minute.”

He slid down into the ditch, fighting brambles and brush and fallen saplings. He no longer cared that Tomash’ta might be lying in wait somewhere nearby, hoping for another chance at him.

The ditch paralleled the rough road, then dipped to form the dry bed of a stream. Smooth, water-worn rocks impeded him. He left the burning van and Franklin behind. After thirty yards, in a flatter area, he halted. The light from the burning vehicle was no help here. He thought he saw something white move in the shadows, and he paused to dry his palm, shifting his gun to his left hand.

“Durell!”

The voice came from the high, rocky escarpment on

the other side of the road.

“Forget her, Durell!” There was a short laugh. “She’s dead!”

He felt the curl in the pit of his stomach again. It couldn’t be. There was a thickness of hazel brush ahead.

The dim spot of white that he had glimpsed was up there. He moved to the edge of the stream bed, where the high bank and the road protected him from Tomash’ta, up on the rocks.

“Dee?” he called softly.

He heard Marcus yell at Franklin, asking questions. Then Henley’s voice urged him on. Durell slid forward, careful of Tomash’ta’s penchant for booby traps.

“Dee?”

The spot of white wavered. Moved slightly. He pushed through the brush and clutter of forest trash. Some of the trees behind him had caught fire and were burning like torches against the dark mountainside. Far down in the valley, a forest-fire siren began to wail.

“Deirdre?” he called a third time.

She was there.

She had been tied and gagged with savage force, and she lay helplessly in the dark brush, only her eyes alive, wide and staring at him. She blinked and moved and he saw that the whiteness he had spotted, showing him where she lay, was a handkerchief gag in her mouth. Her slacks were torn and the man’s hunting shirt that she wore was ripped off one shoulder. There was a bloody scratch on one cheek.

He knelt beside her and took off the gag.

She coughed, and while he untied the bonds, she said, “Sam, it took you long enough. He was coming back for me just now. He’s still somewhere around. Be careful.”