Assignment Unicorn (10 page)

“Coincidence,” Rasmussen said.

He sat on the front bench seat with Durell, his big body
twisted so he could look backward at Maggie, huddled beside Wolfe behind them.
He had tried to keep up a running chatter of flip conversation with her,
but Maggie was sunk in a peculiar sullen silence as Durell drove the Mercedes
as fast as he dared. After a time Rasmussen sighed and turned his handsome
profile to watch the road ahead.

“I don’t think it’s a coincidence,” Durell said.

“Wolfe?”

“Yeah.”

“Can you make them out?”

“No. Too much glare from their high beams. You want to stop
and take them?” the big man grumbled.

“Not yet.”

“Rasmussen?”

“I’m listening.”

“Was a tail car arranged when you left Zurich?”

“No.”

“Wilderman didn’t mention it to you, you’re sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“Just how sick was LeChaux?”

Rasmussen laughed with the contempt of the perpetually
healthy for any illness. “His guts were practically hanging out, old buddy. It
was legitimate.”

“Could his food have been doctored?”

“We ate breakfast together. He just got the wrong plate,
maybe.”

Durell was not satisfied. He would have continued his
probing, but they had started the climb up the curving, winding road through
the Diablerets at the Col du Pillon. There was no opposing traffic now.
The hour was getting late, close to ten. He turned the wheel for a hairpin
curve to the right and the Mercedes, hugging the snow-covered road, responded
handily. That was when he saw the traffic barrier ahead and the waving
flashlights.

There was a steep precipice slanting high into the dark sky
to the left and guard rails to the right edging the road, where a long cliff
dropped into the valley. There was no place to go. Behind them, the car that
had trailed them began to speed up and came along fast at their rear.

“Hang on,” Durell said quietly.

Rasmussen said, “It might be legitimate. They’re in uniform.
I see snow past the barrier. Maybe it’s an avalanche—”

“Shut up,” Durell said.

He tramped on the gas and the Mercedes shot ahead, the
engine thrumming powerfully. Ahead of them, the uniformed figures began
to wave their arms frantically. He could not judge how many there were. Wolfe
ordered Maggie down on the floorboards of the back seat and twisted
about, his rifle in his hand, watching the rear. The second car turned
the bend in the road and headlights flared against the bare rock cliff,
then focused on the Mercedes. Rasmussen had a handgun out and braced his legs
against the dashboard. Durell floored the gas pedal.

Too late, he saw that Rasmussen had been right. There was a
wall of white snow just beyond the barriers where rocks and ice had tumbled
down from somewhere high above on the mountainside and blocked the road. Even
then, Durell did not think it was either accident or coincidence.

They hit the barrier with a crash. Boards and pipe stands
flew through the air. Something hit the windshield and starred the glass
and spread in a quick crackle of small opaque breaks that looked as if the
glass had suddenly become wet. The Mercedes jolted, skidded to the right,
fishtailed. Durell fought the wheel, went into a long slide sidewise, and
the car bounced off the guardrail, slewed toward the rock wall, and slammed
forward at the vast tongue of snow and boulders that blocked their way. There
was no way to check the car’s forward momentum. Behind them, he thought he
heard the crack of a gun and saw the pursuing car’s headlights flare in
the rear-vision mirror, bathing the Mercedes’ interior in a sweep of
brilliance. The wheel jerked and jumped out of his hands. The slope of loose
snow over the road loomed up ahead, and then they plowed into it with a heavy, solid
thud.

The engine died. Durell cut the ignition switch. There were
thuds and clunks and rapping noises as small stones and clods of snow fell on
the half-buried car. Durell tried to force his door open. It would not budge. Rasmussen
grunted and pushed the door outward on his side, far enough to squeeze his bulk
through. He vanished, floundering in snow that hissed and flowed
down over him. Durell shoved desperately at his door again, gained a few
inches, pushed once more, and squeezed out.

“Maggie? Maggie, are you all right?”

“Y-yes. I think so. Sam—”

“Wolfe?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you hurt?”

“Banged my noggin.”

“Bring your gun,” Durell said.

It was neatly arranged, Durell thought. The Mercedes could
be pushed over the edge of the road, after the cash was removed, and it would
go over the precipice and down a thousand feet to bury itself in the tongue of the
avalanche below, not to be found until spring came once again to Les
Diablerets. He felt a sudden rage and took out his handgun. The air was
bitterly cold. The icy wind that blew down from the top of the pass made it worse.
The stars were as hard as diamonds. The moon was behind the looming peaks of
the Diablerets.

“Rasmussen?” Durell called.

There was no answer.

20

RASMUSSEN felt good. It was coming through to him now,
rippling along his back, spreading outward to his arms and shoulders and legs,
surges of power that brought a sense of delight to his purely physical being. He
did not feel the cold. After sliding ten feet down through the snow on the
slope, away from the Mercedes, his booted feet hit rock and he checked himself.
Snow continued to hiss and flow around him, piling up around his
shoulders, pushing him downward toward the edge of the precipice. He felt no
fear. Exultation leaped in his chest and he drew in deep breaths of the thinly
oxygenated air. When he looked back at the car that had been following them—a
gray Rolls—and the guards at the smashed barrier, he felt an excitation beyond
control. He didn’t need them, really. He could do it all alone. Nothing was
impossible.

The
girl, he
thought.

The girl first. Then the money.

The girl had intrigued him from the moment he had first
clapped eyes on her. A shock of surprise, of course. The same old Maggie. A
tall woman, a man’s woman. Just what he had been hoping for. Nothing at all
like the skinny pig he had been shacked up with in
Czecho
,
while working Faraday’s string in Prague. He couldn’t even remember that one’s
name now. Later there had been Corinne, in Paris, who had worked out of Joshua Strawbridge’s
Finance Section for K Section. She had talked a lot and had been useful, and
because of her he had been moved up and finally made it to this job. He
was going to enjoy this. They were all stupid. It was funny how stupid they all
were. How slowly they moved, how carelessly, with poor reflexes and puny
reaction time and flabby bodies. He was proud of his own physique, of the
swelling, powerful biceps, the long
pistonlike
legs
that could run endlessly at top speed, of the power in his big hands. His hands
were like hatchets or talons, whichever way he chose to use them.

Yes, he felt good. There would be no problems. Afterward, he
would enjoy getting to know Maggie all over again. LeChaux’s wife had been a
hot enough number, well versed in the arts and tricks of love. Lily had been
eager, even rapacious, in her perversions. He had enjoyed special twists of
pleasure in turning tricks with her in LeChaux’s own bed. Poor LeChaux. A
comic. A stumblebum from the bayous. The cuckold. Lily had given him the key to
LeChaux’s apartment, of course. It was easy enough to wait for LeChaux there,
to wait in the predawn dark, with Lily sleeping restlessly, never sated,
claiming to be not quite satisfied, always moaning for more, more and
more. LeChaux came in innocently enough. He had headed straight for the
bathroom. LeChaux’s kidneys were giving him trouble, and he had kept that from
K Section’s medical officer at Zurich Central; but Lily had mentioned it, the
frequency and burning LeChaux complained of so often, so Rasmussen had given him
the case of “ptomaine” right there in the bathroom. The knife had gone into
LeChaux’s gut like cheese. Then he had ripped it sideways and upward. The stink
was quite impressive. LeChaux had folded over the toilet with a single low moan
of surprise, of denial that this was his own blood and guts and crap spilling
into the toilet bowl.

All this went through Rasmussen’s mind with the speed of
electronic computer relays.

Maggie
, he thought
again.

With Maggie Donaldson it would be different.

Strength flowed down his back, his belly, into his groin.
His booted feet gripped the
snowbank
, drove him upward
toward the half-buried car. The tail car had stopped at the barricades,
headlights flaring. The others were spilling out of it and running forward with
the peculiar speed and drive that Rasmussen knew well. He felt wonderful.
Durell was on the other side of the Mercedes, struggling for secure footing in
the avalanche snow. Wolfe had gotten out of the back and was helping the girl.
They were on this side of the car. Wolfe turned and looked at him as he came
back up the snowy edge of the road; the man’s head seemed to sink into his shoulders,
swinging from side to side slightly like a cornered bear seeking his enemies.
Rasmussen swiped him with his arm and drove Wolfe aside like a straw man. Wolfe
grunted and went down, his face bleeding. The blood looked black in the
headlight glare of the car behind them. The girl was just getting out of the
back of the Mercedes, her long right leg extended from the doorway. Rasmussen’s
lips skinned back against his teeth. The cold air was like tonic to his lungs.
He saw the girl’s face change when she looked at him, and at the last moment she
gave a short cry and tried to draw back into the car. He caught her gloved hand
and pulled hard. He used too much strength. The girl screamed in pain.

“Maggie, come on,” he said.

“Get away from me!"

"Maggie—"

She was too big a girl to be handled easily. But Rasmussen
felt he could do anything. He pulled her out of the car with a single yank and
she stumbled past him to fall into the
snowbank
. He
heard the other men shouting, but paid no attention to them. Durell was coming around
the back of the wrecked Mercedes; he seemed to be moving as if under water, in
slow motion. Durell shouted something, calling to him to let the girl go. He saw
the .38 in Durell’s hand, coming up. Plenty of time. Nothing could hurt him.
Maggie floundered, trying to get to her feet. He still kept his grip on
her. He swung her up lightly, without feeling the effort that cracked the muscles
of his shoulders and back. Her fists were feathers on his chest. He grinned at
her. They were all so slow, so slow.

“Don’t worry, Maggie. It’s for your own good, baby. Your own
good.”

He had to turn away from her then because Durell had
finally come around the back of the car and was within reach. Rasmussen
dumped the girl, laughed, and grabbed for him. But Durell’s gun was up now, and
Rasmussen saw the spurt of flame from the muzzle, felt the shock as the
bullet tore into his arm. He felt no pain. He knew now, however, that he had
waited too long. The bullet smashed bone and muscle and tore away half his
shoulder, but he did not feel it. He reached again for Durell, caught his free
hand, pulled savagely. Durell went spinning off to his right, into the thick
fluffy snow. At the same time, in slow motion, Rasmussen felt himself
turning, knew it was the impact of the bullet he had taken. His feet went out
from under him. Durell fired again. This time the .38 S&W was pointed
directly at Rasmussen’s heart. Rasmussen’s chest blew apart from the heavy
bullet, he heard a faraway roaring in his ears, saw his chest cavity open, and
went down, denying the fact, denying everything in a tidal wave of blood and surprise,
and floated away somewhere, watching the stars go out one by one.

He felt betrayed.

21

"MAGGIE?”

“Y-yes.”

“Help Wolfe.”

“Was he—was Rasmussen one of them?”

“Yes. Hurry, please.”

Durell helped the girl as Wolfe climbed to his feet. Everything
had happened fast; the others at the barricade and the men from the pursuing
car were still some fifty yards away. There were at least half a dozen of
them. They were coming on fast, running along the hard-packed snow on the road
that remained between the broken barriers and the avalanche snow. Wolfe’s eyes under
his beetling brows were dazed. Durell caught the girl’s hand, pulling her
toward the edge of the road. In the starlight and the white reflection of
the other car’s head beams, he saw the sharp, precipitous drop, the tumbled
jumble of the snowfall going down the incline into the valley. A dark mass of
conifers had broken the avalanche’s slide, about two hundred feet down. There was
no other place to go.

“Come on.”

Wolfe’s heavy Magnum hammered as the big man squeezed off
two shots at the oncoming men. One of them went down and stayed down. Another
spun about, fell, called something, got up and came running forward again, on a
leg that was surely broken. Durell jumped off the side of the road into the
snow, holding Maggie’s hand. They both landed deeply, with a thudding impact,
and then slid downward, on and on, in a swift, thundering rush of snow that
carried them with it. Wolfe followed. Durell heard their pursuers shouting to
one another. The sound was drowned out by the rumbling thunder of their slide.
The mass of dark trees below came rushing upward with terrifying speed. Durell
kept his grip on the gun with one hand, on Maggie with the other. The trees rushed
toward them. There were broken limbs mixed with the snow now, branches and
trunks that had been snapped off with the first impact of the avalanche.
Something hit Durell in the chest, knocked the breath out of him; he lost his
grip on Maggie, lost his sense of orientation as the wave of snow he rode
downward turned him over. He could not tell up from down. Everything went dark.
He knew he was still falling with the snow, and felt a jolting pain in his
shoulder as he struck a tree, felt another one across his left thigh. The
rumbling, hissing roar of the snowfall began to ease. Durell struggled and
thrashed about. He still could see nothing. Finally he felt himself come to a
halt with his back against a tree, his legs upward in the air. He fought his
way erect, flailing his arms. Snow was in his mouth, his nose, his eyes.
He dashed it away. He could still see nothing. He struggled some more, feeling
one leg pinioned under a heavy, wet weight. At last there was a glimmer of
light. Stars. He opened his mouth to shout.