Assignment Unicorn (19 page)

“Mr. Durell," the voice said.

Waking, he thought there was a deep satisfaction in the way
he was addressed. It was just dawn, and very cold in the cell. Ice rimmed the
stone walls.

“Mr. Durell?” the voice asked again. The camera swung,
seeking him out. It was growing dark in the cell. “Are you ready to have dinner
with me?”

“If it isn’t oatmeal,” Durell said.

“Here is your invitation.”

The slot in the door opened and closed before he was aware
of it. Something rolled slowly over the floor, glinting, paused, wobbled,
and settled down on the stone with a pleasant ringing sound. The camera watched
him. He lifted on his haunches and picked it up.

It was a gold coin. A unicorn. Not the facsimile he had seen
around the necks of the unicorn assassins. It was the real thing, very old,
worn, its diameter irregular, but heavy, smooth under his fingers. He
rubbed his thumb over the faint tracing of a unicorn rampant over a shield, turned
it over, and saw a star on the reverse side.

“Recognize it?” asked the speaker.

“Yes,” said Durell. “Is Mr. Sanderson here?”

“Mr. Sanderson was useful to us only to make the identification
copies our people wear. Mr. Sanderson of Tower Rising has been packed off
happily to the Continent for a long holiday. You may ignore him henceforth. He has
served our purpose and yours, too, we suspect.”

“Is that an editorial or royal ‘we’?” Durell asked.

“Or is there more than one of you?”

The silence was held just a fraction of a moment too long.
Durell thought he ought to cover it, and suddenly yelled, “You son of a bitch,
you’ve kept me here maybe a week, maybe longer, I don’t know or care anymore,
but I’m tired of it, you hear? I came in good faith, to offer my services, and
you’ve kept me in this cell like a pig, watching every move I make. I’m sick of
it, understand? I won’t be toyed with any more for your remote amusement. You
think I care about your goddam coins?” He seized the gold unicorn and suddenly
swung his arm and hurled it at the high, barred window over his head. It sailed
through and out and was gone in the gray sky beyond, twinkling for a moment
before it vanished. Then, on his feet, he swept up the slop bucket and hurled
it at the TV camera positioned in the opposite corner of the cell. His aim was
accurate. The bucket and its contents smashed satisfactorily against the camera
on its bracket, spilling, cracking metal, ripping the adjacent speaker and light
from the ceiling. The camera was knocked askew. The speaker wires sparked for a
moment, then went dead. Everything dripped.

Durell stared at the mess and laughed.

38

THE PATH led up across the barren crest of a hill. There was
a rime of ice and a thin dusting of snow on the rough ground. There were no
trees anywhere in sight. Across the low dip was another tower, this one round
and obviously a prehistoric structure. Durell recognized it as a
broch
, dating
back to beyond the first invasions of Harold
Fairhair
.
Then the guards turned him to the left, not gently, onto another path, leading
around the hill. The sea was abruptly cut off from sight. A small lake
reflected the last glimmer of steely light from the sky. Near the lake,
on this side of it, was a long stone house, squatting close to the ground, with
a thatched roof. Other farm buildings were scattered nearby. They all seemed to
have been recently reconditioned.

“Inside,” the guard grunted.

Durell stumbled across the threshold, knocked his head on
the low door frame, blinked at the light.

“Sit down,” someone said.

Dr. Alexander MacLeod was the man he had seen in the
shooting jacket—a round, jolly-looking man, bald as an onion, with a hearty
paunch covered by a red-checked waistcoat that may or may not have been in a clan
tartan. He sat at one end of a long plank table in the light of electric
sconces fastened to the white-plastered wall. He had already finished a
dinner of duck and trout, to judge from the plates, but at the other end of the
table, well away from him, was a place set for Durell.

The inevitable oatmeal.

“If you don’t mind,” MacLeod said, “please sit at some
distance from me. Your term in the cell has made you—ah—rather uncleanly
and—ah—odorous.”

“Do I have to eat more oatmeal?”

“Yes, you do.”

“I detest porridge,” Durell said.

“So do I. I was brought up on it. Do sit down, please.
Incidentally, the camera you destroyed cost well over three thousand pounds. If
we come to any arrangement, the amount will be deducted from whatever
figure we arrive at."

“Spoken like a true Scot,” Durell said.

“Every
ickle
makes a
mickle
,” MacLeod said. “Will you sit down, or must you be
forced to do so?”

Durell sat. The two men in jumpsuits who had escorted him
from the abbey tower stood against the wall, one on either side of him.

“Do eat, please."

Durell ate. His feet felt cold on the stone floor, although
the crofter’s house was pleasantly warmed, and he immediately blinked in
apparent drowsiness, after his long days in the cell. He said, “You have heard
about your sister’s husband?”

“Joshua Strawbridge is now irrelevant.”

“I don’t believe he killed himself. I don’t think it was
suicide.”

“Truly?”

“It was murder. Did you arrange it?”

Dr. MacLeod waved a soft white hand. “Joshua was a nuisance.
He outlived his usefulness. It is quite true, as you at once suspected, that he
fed us data, in his position as Finance officer for K Section, on routine
transfers of funds. Funds, incidentally, that were often squandered in the
wrong places, upon the wrong people. Does your Mr. Meecham truly believe that
the process. of buying foreign loyalties is valid? Squandering taxpayers’
money, indeed. In any case, immaterial now, eh?” MacLeod brushed crumbs from
his red vest.

Durell looked at the two attendants in their jumpsuits. Both
automatic weapons were trained on him. He was careful not to make any sudden
moves, but he was surprised at the good feeling in him, the sense of acuity and
perception in all his mental processes; it was a well-being that, after his
term in the cell, should not have existed.

MacLeod put on a pair of horn-rimmed glasses. He looked
harmless, innocuous, rather like a pleasant faculty member of a type Durell had
met many times at Litchfield College.

“We do admire you, Mr. Durell,” MacLeod said.

“Although, of course, your temper really should be more restrained.
You have been quite correct in all your deductions, beginning when you
first appeared on the scene as investigating officer in Palingpon. We
wanted Donaldson’s daughter then, but you frustrated us. Have you enjoyed her,
Mr. Durell?”

“How is Maggie?” Durell asked.

“Presumably, worried to death over you.”

“You don’t have her here?”

“We don’t want her now.”

“
N o
longer interested in her
either?” Durell asked.

“Quite so. However, you must contain your feelings of
relief, assuming you have developed some sort of affection for her. If you make
any errors in the matters we have programmed for you, you will not be alone to
suffer for mistakes. Maggie will be available to share your punishment.”

“All these killings haven’t bothered you, Doctor?”

“Why should they? The cost of any commodity is normally a
matter of supply and demand. Any glut on the market cheapens the value of the
item, and you certainly must know, the expanding world population makes human
life just about the cheapest commodity available.”

“I don’t think I like you,” Durell said.

“You don’t have to, Mr. Durell. Just obey me.”

“I think I’d rather take orders from your boss.”

MacLeod’s eyes glinted behind his glasses. He sucked a bit
of duckling from between his teeth. “You will get no farther than me.
Understand that. It is I who command. I do not underestimate your intelligence.
You were very quick to trace down the significance of the unicorn coins—a
mere identity symbol, you must now realize—and the obvious fact that
Strawbridge was feeding us useful input on K Section’s financial
transfers, all of which made it easy—ah—to execute our demonstrations.”

“For whose benefit were you demonstrating?” Durell asked.

“Ah. Are you quite finished with your meal?”

“I don’t want any more of it. Why do you hate K Section so
much?”

“Not I. My feelings are neutral.”

“It almost seems to me as if you have been carrying on a
personal vendetta against K Section. You could have made other demonstrations
with the use of your drug. If you wanted money, a lot of money, you could have
broken into any number of banks, for example, the world over. What you got from
the demonstrations you did make was only peanuts, relatively speaking.” Durell leaned
forward earnestly. The table was made of two-inch planking, but he thought he
could lift it. He said, “Would you answer a few questions?”

“Certainly.”

“Why did your people try to kill me on that Maryland beach?”

“My dear Mr. Durell, your progress toward us was appalling.
I must admit it. And your performance on the beach was remarkable. But then,
when you flew alone to London, We were piqued by further curiosity. So we
let you live, to see what you would do. We decided you could be useful to us.”
'

“I can be. I intend to be,” Durell said.

“An eager detector, eh?”

“Perhaps. Now that Joshua Strawbridge, our Finance officer,
is dead, you have no further pipelines into K Section.”

“Perhaps none as effective as you might be.” Dr. MacLeod
gestured with a small hand. “Eat your porridge, my boy.”

“No. I don’t want it.”

“Eats,

The two guards moved in closer to Durell. One of them put
the muzzle of his gun to Durell’s head. Durell shrugged and picked up his spoon
and dug into the oatmeal.

“Very good. Surely you have other questions?”

“I understand you are telling me all this because I’ll never
get off this place alive,” Durell said. “Where are we, by the way?”

“In the Orkney Islands, north of the Scottish mainland. You
guessed as much, I think.”

“Yes. The other question: What is your ultimate goal in all
this?”

Dr. MacLeod smiled. He looked benign, fat and happy and
contented with his achievements. He watched Durell eat the oatmeal and signaled
the two guards back to the wall. Then he folded his hands over his red-checked
belly and settled back in comfort at the opposite end of the table. Durell
heard no outside sounds from beyond the dining room, but he did not doubt that
others were nearby.

“The ultimate goal,” Dr. MacLeod said. “Well, we wish to
make an ultimate demonstration. Our price for my drug—the unicorn drug, as I
believe you call it, and most fitting the term is, I assure you—the price
will be enormous. We have buyers ready. But it is not just the money. It is we
who will control the entire operation, now, at the settlement, and in the
future.”

“I should think the killings and hijackings would be enough.”

“It is you who excited our admiration, however, by noting
the ‘innocent bystanders.’ You pressed Maggie Donaldson for her father’s
relationship and true objectives on Palingpon. You saw there was more to it
than die mere robberies of K Section funds. Very astute. A long shot in
deductive reasoning, perhaps, but a correct one, of course. Hence our concern
about you, Mr. Durell. Incidentally, do not think for one moment during this
conversation that we are taken in by your professed desire to desert K Section
and join us. We have studied your profile in extreme detail. Whether you
like it or not, you are a patriot. You would not betray K Section or your country.
Your claim to want to work with us is denied, of course.”

“I see,” Durell said.

“You do not see.” A note of impatient emotion finally
broke through Dr. MacLeod’s jolly host behavior. “We are not stupid. You should
give us credit for intelligent reactions to your moves. Surely you must expect
to die for what you know. Surely you must be skeptical if we were to accept
your mere word that you wish to join us. But join us you will, whether it suits
you or not.”

“You’re very sure of yourself, Doctor.”

“I am. You are bound to me now, body and soul, whatever you
choose to do.”

“Truly?”

“Truly.”

“How?”

“I will explain in a moment.” All at once Dr. MacLeod slid
from his chair and waddled to a buzzer set into the wall. Durell was shocked.
The man was no more than five feet tall, with abnormally short legs,
apparently malformed at birth. There was something grotesque about his fully
developed torso and those childlike sticks of lower limbs. MacLeod punched the
buzzer and said something in Gaelic, waited, spoke more sharply, and then
returned to the table. He looked angry now. He spoke as if he had not
interrupted himself. “It is not for money alone, Mr. Durell, that we have
embarked on the course we follow. It is a matter of conscience, however you may
argue it. The world is a desperate place, these days, filled with violence,
lawlessness, a towering contempt for the rights of others. Discipline—swift
punishment, unalterable discipline—is required, if we are to restore sanity to
society. Force against force. An eye for an eye, if you will. Justice for the
victims, justice for the perpetrators of violence.”

“And who is to be the judge?” Durell asked. “You and your
unicorns?”

“The term ‘unicorn’ is an apt one. It was not chosen by
accident. The symbol was picked deliberately. The unicorn is, according to
mythology, a lover of virtue, inevitably drawn to virtue, purity and decency.
They say the unicorn’s hooves never touch grass.” Dr. MacLeod grinned, but his
eyes were hard. “So we leave little or no trace, we unicorns. You have noticed,
of course, our connections with, or against, various national security forces.
An elite body, scattered around the world, will soon enough put things
right."