Assignment - Quayle Question (8 page)

“You refer to your father by his given name?”

“I think of him like that.”

“And you have not seen Rufus Quayle for how long?” “Months and months. Maybe a year.”

“And where is he now?”

“I’ve told you. I don’t know.”

“My dear Miss Quayle. Do you realize how much I have stretched the limits of my patience?”

“You stretch mine, too.”

“It is said here and there, in the media and in the international business, financial, and industrial circles, that of all the thousands of members of the Q.P.I. complex, you, his daughter, and you alone, always know where Rufus Quayle may be reached. You, and you alone, always know where he is.”

“Are you after my father? Is that your real aim?”

“Please respond to my question.”

“It’s not true. I used to know, always, where to reach him. Rather, it was the reverse.
He
always knew where to reach me. When he needed me.”

“For your—ah—instincts? Your talent?”

“My talent is like ashes in my mouth.”

“You are a brilliant woman, Miss Quayle. Do you not agree?”

“I’m a freak.”

“Because of your abilities to remember, to collate, to integrate, to see relationships between diverse items of data that no one else, and no computer, can see?”

“That’s my talent, yes.” “And you have lied a third time. You do know where Rufus Quayle may be reached.”

“No.”

“You defend him and his privacy, even at the risk of your own life? Do you do that?”

“I told you—”

“Has Rufus Quayle ever shown you the slightest hint of affection?”

“No.”

“Or paternal love?”

“No.”

“Yet you love him?”

“He’s my father.”

“Answer me, please. You love him?”

“Yes ”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. I shouldn’t. He hasn’t ever been a real father to me. But I love him.”

“And so you are loyal to him?”

“Yes.”

“Out of love? Not fear?”

“Perhaps a bit of both.”

“And where is he, Miss Quayle?”

“I don’t know.”

“And what did Martin want you to solve?”

“I don’t know.”

“My patience, for now, has come to an end.”

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

The small dancer type, the man who had bowed to her with that odd, mocking Oriental gesture, was the leader. She never had a chance to see what they had done to Martin. She was blindfolded, with such swiftness and dazzling efficiency that there was no opportunity, absolutely none, to struggle again. They had led her out the back door of the apartment and down to Park Avenue, onto the ramp that led to the underground garage below the building, and from there she had been pushed into a waiting car. She tried to listen to their voices, to tape them in her mind so she could identify them later; but they rarely spoke, and their orderly plan proceeded smoothly without any need for them to direct each other.

They did not take Martin with her, and she wondered about that, and then realized that one of the original trio was missing, not in the smoothly driven car. So Martin was with the absent third man. She felt an ache of worry in the pit of her stomach. She felt outrage and anger at being the victim of what was obviously a kidnapping. She felt violated. A number of possibilities rippled through her mind. It could be just a criminal kidnapping for ransom. If so, they were fools, she thought bitterly. Rufus would never pay a cent for her. That was the way he was. Proud and indomitable, stubborn and unyielding, whether it was a commercial deal or a personal matter. (But she knew little about her father’s personal life.) Rufus Quayle was too ruthless in his own right ever to yield to a simple criminal ploy like this.

Perhaps it was something else. A matter of industrial espionage? Yes, that could be it, she thought. If so, then Q.P.I. would get her free. The conglomerates within conglomerates that represented the empire of Rufus Quayle, all seeded and fertile and growing and related to each other like the field of wheat within her mind—the conglomerate had no emotion except that of self-preservation and growth. She was too valuable to Q.P.I. for Q.P.I. to desert her. They would gain her release, eventually. They would pay the price for her return.

The world was a place of terror, of international pressures toward violence, playing a politics of fear and death and blackmail and wildly irrational plots that, incredibly, caused sovereign nations to bow meekly to debasing and degrading demands. Yes, she thought, that was it.

Relax, she told herself.

It will be over soon enough.

They won’t hurt Martin, either.

She was aware of the cool September air, the smells of traffic in the street, the rush and push of passing cars. And then there was an airport, somewhere out in the country, maybe Westchester, she thought, judging by the turns her captors’ oar made. She was pushed into a plane, a small jet, and they took off with the swift efficiency that marked all their moves.

After that she was not so sure. Whatever had been impregnated in the cloth over her mouth had worn off swiftly, or partially, so her attention was dreamlike, her span of concentration dimmed and attenuated. She was not sure how long the flight lasted. She guessed it was almost four hours, but it could have been longer or shorter; she could not tell.

The landing was rough, which meant a small or ill-kept private airstrip. They made sure her blindfold was still secure, and then hustled into another car. She was aware of an abnormal chill in the air, a sharp biting cold that made her shiver. She felt the car climb and climb. The air grew even colder. It felt dry. She was wearing only the simple little black frock with which she had meant to meet Martin in her apartment. No one in the oar spoke or complained or thought to give her something warmer to wear.

Then she was in a building, and the contrasting wave of hot, humid heat struck her like a blow.

The heat in the building was something she would always remember. It was like something out of a tropical rain forest. She could not understand it.

And then her cell.

And the silence.

She was left blindfolded. She waited for some time, for long minutes after she heard locks snap and bolts thrown home. No one came to her. She sensed she was alone.

She reached up and untied the blindfold knotted at the back of her head.

She was still blind.

The darkness seemed absolute.

She wanted to whimper, to cry out, to yell and scream. Terror tore her mind apart. She simply stood in the center of a blackness as deep as the deepest part of black interstellar space. She bit her lip and tasted the salt of her blood, and refused to make a sound.

Finally she sank down to her hands and knees. The floor was of stone. It felt warm under the palms of her hands. She lay down on her side, as if floating in the infinite darkness of space.

And waited.

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

“Deborah, you have been hostile and negative toward me.”

“What do you expect?”

“I have no more time for you. I believe it is now necessary to demonstrate to you that this is not a game we play, that my intentions are most earnest. I will not be balked by any devices you imagine will keep me from learning what I wish to know.”

“I don’t know what you want.”

“I want you to know that when I ask you a question, I intend to receive a proper reply.”

“All right. I’ve done so.”

“You have not. You have lied. You have tried to be devious. Not a good policy toward the Messenger.” 

“What messenger?”

“It is a title, not a servant’s status.”

“I’m not convinced that you are sane.”

“I do not try to convince you of that. Will you now tell me about Martin Pentecost and his suspicions?”

“Why not ask him?”

“It is not possible.”

“He got away? Really?”

“In a sense.”

“But you don’t have him here?”

“We do. In a sense. Where is Rufus Quayle?”

“I told you—”

“Very well.”

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

They took off her blindfold. For the first time in many hours, she saw light again. Dimly at first, as if it came through hundreds of thin, gauzy curtains. One by one, the curtains lifted. She blinked her eyes, trying to clear her vision.

It was as if she were in a motionless plane, high above a darkening desert. Mountains loomed in the far distance, purple with the shadows of evening. Far below, the flat vista stretched without meaning, empty and desolate, dotted here and there with scrub growth, ravaged by canyons and buttes, by grotesque and beautiful rock formations of reds and grays and glittering quartz.

She realized she was looking through a wide, panoramic window.

“You may turn around.”

“I can’t.”

“Tomash’ta?”

It was the first name she had heard spoken among them. She felt herself turned in the chair on which she was seated. They had tied her to the chair, arms and legs, so she could not rise up out of it or move in any way. The chair was turned.

She saw her inquisitor.

She felt again the impact of a sense of unreality, of mental denial. Gross, enormous weight, fat, breathing with that faint hint of asthmatic difficulty. A face whose' detailed features escaped her amid a wave of malignancy, of evil, that emanated from the seated figure.

“You find me repellent, my dear young woman?”

“Yes.”

“I am the Messenger. I signify all the wickedness to which this world has been abandoned.”

“You’re still talking nonsense.”

“We shall see. You asked about Martin? I told you, my patience is not limited. Look at Martin. Turn her some more, Tomash’ta.”

The chair was turned, lifted bodily, set down quietly at a new angle. She saw the room, a simple plastered chamber, with a Spanish archway at one end, another arch becoming visible as she was turned about. There were heavy old beams in the ceiling. Hooks had been hung from them on iron chains.

Something hung from one of the hooks.

It was a naked male body, almost unidentifiable from the carcasses of steers she had once seen in a slaughterhouse.

The man had been mutilated and tortured. With knives and with fire. She began to vomit. The big iron hook had been inserted into the jaw of the head, and the body was suspended that way from the iron hook.

Slowly, through spasms of retching, she looked into the face of the dead man.

Looked into the glazed, insane eyes of the dead man.

It was Martin.

It was cold and wet in Washington. When they landed at National Airport at two o’clock in the morning, the stars had been out and there was a balmy feel to the pre-dawn air, promising some Indian summer weather. But during the taxi ride from the airport, the wind shifted to the east and freshened, and a faint drizzle began when Durell and Deirdre arrived at his bachelor apartment near Rock Creek Park. It was a place he had stubbornly kept as a home base, even with the deterioration of the neighborhood.

The K Section plane at the airstrip near White Spring Spa had taken them all quickly out of the mountain area. Durell sent Franklin to be hospitalized with a chipped ankle bone. Marcus and Henley were told to stand by at Annapolis Street, turning in at the dormitory there on the third floor. Durell had given Henley a verbal report for General McFee.

Marcus was doubtful. “Aren’t you coming with us?”

“Not yet. Perhaps later.”

Henley coughed and poked his glasses up on his aristocratic nose and looked meaningfully at Deirdre. “Let it go, Marcus. Durell is the boss. Ours not to reason why, eh?”

Marcus grumbled, “I’ve got reports of my own to make out for the DIA.”

“Then make them,” Durell said briefly. “You’ll hear from me later.”

“Cajun.” Henley was patient. “You’re supposed to work with us. We’ve got a potential fiasco on our hands. You don’t have private plans of your own, do you?”

“You’ll hear from me tomorrow,” Durell said. “We all need some rest, right now.”

Deirdre did not question him when he took the taxi to his own apartment instead of going to No. 20 Annapolis Street. It was three in the morning before the cab pulled up in front of the red-brick building, with its familiar marble trim, near the park. There were several similar buildings on the tree-lined street. The mizzling rain had freshened, and Deirdre shivered in her rough hiking outfit. Durell studied the parked cars at the curb. There were no pedestrians in sight. Mist moved along the tops of the poplar trees in front of the apartments.

There was some mail, a white envelope, visible in Durell’s mailbox. He looked at the box but did not touch it.

“What is it?” Deirdre asked.

“Somebody tipped him off.”

“Are you talking about Tomash’ta?”

“Yes. That’s how he knew I was on this job. That’s why he told the little Akuro girl to call my name, at the Spa.”

“But nobody could know—”

“We know. And people in DIA.”

“I don’t like that, Sam.”

He looked about the deserted apartment-house lobby. The glass front doors showed the street outside to be empty, dimpled by the rain. “Let the mail wait, Dee.”

“You really think it was someone in K Section who tipped Tomash’ta we were going into the mountains?”

“I’m betting it was one of Eli Plowman’s people.”

“Tell me about him, Sam. I don’t know anything about Plowman.”

“Count yourself lucky for it. There isn’t a dossier on him anywhere. There’s nothing about his ‘sanitation squads’ and nothing about the people he recruited. He had his own private fund for his projects. We don’t even know who worked for him. It’s not the sort of thing you risk publicity on by keeping records. If he enlisted anybody, nobody knew about it; and his hired killers naturally never talked about it.”

“Still, you worked with him in Sumatra.”