Assignment - Quayle Question (7 page)

He was the late-twentieth-century computer man, she thought. Crisp, articulate, efficient to a fault. Everything Martin did was done with a purpose, with calculated forethought. He was devoted to Q.P.I., to that vast sprawling complex of commercial enterprises built by Rufus Quayle. He was Rufus’s lieutenant, unquestioning, loyal, following orders even when they seemed senseless.

Yet somewhere in him was a humanity that she herself had uncovered, that she craved and needed as a counter for that field of wheat in her mind that she herself possessed. He understood her. He had been considerate and thoughtful of her needs. She did not know what had gone wrong. The quality of patience in him, constantly at odds with her own dedication, had gradually eroded, become flat and meaningless, then passed the point into a negative gray area where their lives together no longer had a purpose.

“Deborah, I have to see Rufus,” he had said.

“I thought you called me here to see me.”

“Where is your father. It’s really urgent.”

“Why? Is anything wrong?”

“I’m not sure.”

She had mocked him. “But you’re always so sure of everything, Martin. This is a switch, for you.”

“But I told you, Deborah, it’s important. Something is going on that I don’t understand.”

“Perhaps Rufus doesn’t want you to understand.”

“I can’t explain it. Too many little things, adding up to something—something minus. We’re losing ground. Q.P.I., I mean. It’s never happened before.”

“What’s a few million more or less to Rufus? He doesn’t miss it, if it’s a matter of some temporary losses.” “It isn’t that. It’s—”

He paused, looking at her helplessly, his brown eyes searching her face, looking for something he wanted, something he needed. She saw envy there, and helplessness, and a kind of soft rage.

“You could put it together, Deborah.”

“You’re asking me to use my talent—my curse—which you said has destroyed us?”

“This one time.”

“No, Martin. Maybe later—” She ran her hands from her breasts down along her hips and up across her bare, smooth stomach. Stared him in the eye, challenging him. She saw no response. She was touched by an inner destructive fury. “No,” she said again.

“You have the ability to put things together, to take data from this and that source, to make that jump toward a conclusion, Deborah.”

“Try the computers.”

“They tell us nothing. They have no . . . no . . He was rarely at a loss for words.

“Instinct?” she had asked.

“I suppose so.”

“You surprise me. Shall I get dressed?”

“Listen, can you meet me in New York? The data output is there. Maybe you can make something out of it.” “Go to hell, Martin. I’m not your computer anymore. I’m a woman.”

“I know.”

“Can you see me, me, when you look at me, Martin?”

“I see you,” he said helplessly.

“So?”

“I can’t do it without love,” he whispered.

“And you don’t love me anymore?”

“No.”

“What a confession. Impotent without love.” Her fury exploded. Her naked body trembled. “Go to hell, Martin. Go climb that mountain out there and fall off it. I won’t help you.”

“Your father—”

“I don’t know my father. He doesn’t know me. Rufus Quayle couldn’t care less about me.”

He said desperately, “But will you meet me in New York?”

“Maybe. Maybe not.” 

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

“Miss Quayle, you are not listening, are you?”

“I was thinking of something else.”

“Of Martin, in Zermatt?”

“I guess so.”

“You sound tired.”

“I’ve been sitting here for hours.”

“Only thirty-eight minutes.”

“Well, it seems like hours.”

“Would you like to rest?”

“I’d like to go home.”

“Do you have a home?”

“You ask embarrassing questions.”

“You have no place to call home?”

“I have apartments. I have three houses. None of them are home.”

“How sad. You did decide, however, to meet Martin after you saw him in Zermatt?”

“Yes.”

“In New York City?”

“Yes.”

“In your apartment there?”

“On Park Avenue. Yes. God, I’m getting tired of you, whoever you are.”

“Did you discover what motivated Martin’s urgency?” 

“No.”

“Then what changed your mind about meeting him?”

“I don’t know. A woman’s prerogative, I guess.”

“But you' do not think or feel or live much like a woman, do you?”

“I suppose not.”

“But you did meet Martin in New York?”

“Yes. You know the answers, all of them, don’t you? Zermatt was not our last meeting. You knew that. But you let me babble on.”

“Babbling lies. A pattern begins to form. When did you meet Martin in New York?”

“Three days ago, I think.” “For how long?”

“When are you going to let me go? What do you want? Money? I can arrange money for you, you son of a bitch. Is that what you’re after? Is that why you broke in and snatched me and took me here?”

“Here? Where are you, Miss Quayle?”

“I don’t know.”

“And who am I, Miss Quayle?”

“I don’t know. You sound fat.”

“What?”

“The way you breathe. Like a fat man.”

“Yes. Immaterial. I believe we were discussing—”

“I can smell you, too.”

“Yes.”

“Something bad.”

“Like fire and brimstone?”

“Maybe.”

“Can one smell evil, Miss Quayle?”

“If what I smell is evil, yes.”

“You are correct. This world is held in hostage to the Dark One. I am his Messenger.”

“Oh, boy, you really are freaked out.”

“We shall find out who is sane and who is not, Miss Quayle, before our interviews are finished.”

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

They had come in with a rush, after she answered the bell at the service door. Their efficient violence was utterly appalling. She was stunned and shattered by the force with which they took her. The brutality. She had seen violence before, but she had always kept a cold, iron control over herself. Like that time the jetliner crashed at the end of the runway in Boston, and all the passengers panicked, clawing at each other to get out. She had remained calm, keeping seated as the safest thing to do in the face of the mindless savagery of what had been a peaceful, civilized planeload of human beings.

But this attack was different.

Perhaps it was the silence with which they worked. There were three of them, wearing stocking masks, and they looked unnatural, faceless entities whose whole beings were absorbed in what they had to do. The apartment was on the fourteenth floor, a quiet and old-fashioned place in the Sixties, high above the noise of traffic and the city’s usual congestion. They were ruthless about everything, slamming her backward against the wall with a jolt that knocked the breath out of her. All without warning, without the slightest hint of what was to come when she innocently opened the door.

The tallest and heaviest one kept her pinned to the wall, her wrists gripped with iron strength that held in it the tremors of incipient violence. The others, both of medium height, although one was shorter than the other and all but danced as he moved, like a ballet performer on his toes, ravaged the apartment with a speed and thoroughness she could not believe. She turned her head to watch them move from the service door, down the hall into the living room. Soft crashing sounds echoed the destruction of the Italian Renaissance furniture. There were quick ripping sounds, soft padding noises, several thuds and bumps she could not understand. Her breath stopped in her throat.

When they came back, one said, “Not here.”

The voice was just a voice. It meant nothing.

“Lady?”

“Yes.”

“You’re Deborah Quayle?”

“Yes.”

“Where is your husband?”

“I have no husband.”

“Don’t get funny. You know this is serious. Where is Martin Pentecost?”

“He’s gone.”

“And the papers he brought?”

“He—he didn’t bring anything.”

She was appalled at the terror that shook in her voice, like a latent scream out of a dark and primeval jungle. The three men wore ordinary suits, dark, neat, expensive. White shirts. Polished shoes. Clean hands and fingernails. One of them smelled of expensive French cologne. She thought that was an error, the only identifiable thing about any of the three.

“When is he due back?”

She looked from side to side. Her wrists hurt where they were pinned high above her head by the man who pressed her to the wall. She knew better than to try to knee him as he crushed her backward.

“What?” she asked.

She could feel their silent eyes watching her, gleaming, behind the nylon of their stocking masks. She knew what their question was. They weren’t going to ask her twice. Terror that defied all her previous concepts of intelligent and calculating behavior moved in her like a tropical storm.

“I don’t know when Martin is coming back.”

“He’s due at eight, isn’t he?”

“If you say so. Look, if you want money, jewels—” None of them laughed.

She was told, “We want you to say when.”

“Yes. Martin is due at eight o’clock.”

“We’re on time,” one of them said. “He’s always prompt. We’ll wait the five minutes.”

Her apartment became a strange place, like an alien land. The smallest of the trio, the one who moved like a dancer, gave her a small mocking bow from the hips. An Oriental gesture. But he did not speak, so she couldn’t tell. The five minutes became an eternity. She had agreed to meet Martin here at eight o’cock. Whatever it was that had so troubled him back in Switzerland had intensified, to judge by the urgency in his voice when she spoke to him on the phone.

“No stripping for me this time, Debbie,” he had told her. “No tricks. It’s a matter of life and death.”

“Oh, Martin.” She had discounted his melodrama. “I’m sorry about last time in Zermatt. It was stupid of me.” “You’re never stupid, Debbie. Deb, listen. You haven’t seen your father since Zermatt?”

“No.”

“He’s not at Ca’d’Orizon?”

“No.”

“All right. I’ll see you at eight. Debbie?”

“Yes?”

“I really need you, Debbie.”

“I need you, Martin.”

“But this is different. We’ll talk about it.”

“Yes.”

The front door of the apartment gave off a melodic chiming sound. She felt the grip on her wrists tighten. She had not seen any weapons evident among the trio, but their very silence, the way they moved, the way they had so speedily ransacked her apartment—looking for what? —gave her warning enough. She kept silent, sick with a sense of betrayal. Even if she shouted a warning, she knew Martin would be taken in as unprepared a manner as she had been.

She whispered, “You’re not going to hurt him?”

“It depends,” one of them said.

“On what?”

“Maybe on you, Miss Quayle.”

The chimes sounded again. The dancer went to open the door. She heard Martin’s exclamation, heard a quick, muffled thud, heard the door close sharply. She suddenly strained against the grip that kept her flat against the wall. She was strong, she knew all sorts of tricks, but the man who pinioned her was too good for her capacities, too ready, too well-trained. Something sharp hit her stomach and now, when it was too late, she cried out to Martin, and then something was pushed against her face, over her mouth and nostrils, and she couldn’t breathe. She tried to struggle for another moment, and then everything became of no importance. She wanted to weep as she felt the curtains dropping, one by one, like clouds drifting in thickening layers over the fruitful fields of her mind.

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

“Miss Quayle?”

“I want to know what your people did with Martin.” “You may learn all that in due course. Did Martin ever explain his problem to you?”

“No.”

“Not over the phone, when vou and he appointed to meet at your apartment?”

“No. Martin rarely talked of intimate business problems over the telephone.”

“But of course he did. Daily. From wherever he happened to be, on Rufus Quayle’s orders.”

“That would be routine business. He wouldn’t talk about this thing that troubled him.”

“This thing that required your peculiar talents to solve?”

“I suppose so.”

“And he never hinted what its nature was?”

“I suppose it affected Q.P.I. interests.”

“Nothing beyond that?”

“I told you, he didn’t even hint to me what it was.”

“Was this not unusual?”

“Our relationship, since the divorce, is unusual.”

“What was he supposed to bring you on that evening?” “Some papers he wanted me to study. Some computer output to analyze.”

“But he had nothing on his person when we intercepted him at your apartment, my dear child. How do you explain that?”

“I can’t.”

“You look dejected, poor girl.”

“I feel dejected. How long does this go on?”

“As long as necessary.”

“Let me go. Please. I’m worried about Martin. Do you have him? I want to see him.”

“Why didn’t Martin have anything with him, if he was coming to see you and ask you to study something for him?”

“I can’t explain that.”

“But you must.”

“I simply can’t.”

“I see. You are obstinate. Unusually loyal. Do you realize that your life is at stake?”

“I don’t care.”

“And Martin’s?”

“Martin is an innocent.” “No one is innocent in this affair. No one in the world. Do you not care what has happened to him? And what will happen to him if you do not cooperate?”

“What have you done to him?”

“You will see.”

“I can’t tell you what I simply don’t know.”

“About Martin?”

“Yes, about Martin.”

“But you know so much about Q.P.I., do you not?”

“I suppose so. But nobody knows it all. Not even the computer memory banks. Maybe not even Rufus.”