Assignment Unicorn (4 page)

The girl was hidden in a partitioned office in one corner of
the long building. He could not see her at first. He moved carefully,
without sound, behind a sorting table, an endless belt that stretched toward
crushing rollers powered by a steam donkey engine that bulked in the rear of
the plant. The door to the partitioned office was open. The girl appeared
there, holding a Remington rifle in both hands. She looked as if she knew
how to use it.

The light inside the building was uncertain. Durell kept
still. The girl looked at the wrecked flatcar that blocked the double
doors. The car had derailed and now lay tilted to one side, heaped up with a buckled,
splintered floor around the nose of the diesel. She stared in puzzlement and
moved toward the side of the building where Durell crouched. When she came
within reach, he jumped her.

She was a tall girl, in her middle twenties, and she wore
faded denims and a man’s shirt with the tails tied about her midriff. Her hair
was skinned back, pulled tightly into a knot at the nape of her neck, the hair
a dark-red color obscured by dust; there were smudges on her face. Her full
breasts did not seem to be restrained by a bra. She had a narrow waist, full
hips, long and solid legs. The striped shirtsleeves were rolled up above her
elbows.

Durell came at her fast from behind, hit her just below the
waist. She gasped and grunted as she went forward with the impact, her arms
going out instinctively to check her fall to the floor. The rifle
slammed on the concrete with a hard clatter. She yelped and tried to retrieve
her grip on the gun as Durell rolled, came up on his feet, and stamped a booted
foot on the barrel. She gave a cry of pain as her fingers were pinned
under the metal. Her swearing could have been learned from Donaldson, whose
vocabulary had been famous. There was nothing weak or feminine about her
resistance. She tried to get her knee into Durell’s crotch, failed, flailed
with her right fist at his face, then stiffened her fingers and
stabbed at his eyes.

“Hold it,” he gasped.

“You murdering mother—”

He hit her hard enough to cloud her eyes for a moment. Her
head snapped back and her face was in profile against the concrete. He
was aware of her loose breasts against his chest, the pillowing of her hips
under him.

“Now just shut up,” Durell said. “I’m not here to hurt you.”

“No? Liar! You helped kill Daddy—”

“Donaldson?”

“Ah, go to hell,” she said. “Go ahead, kill me.”

“Are you Donaldson’s daughter?’

“What else?”

“Listen,” Durell said. “Stop fighting me. I’m on your
side. What’s your name?”

“Maggie. What's yours?”

“Sam Durell.”

She stared up at him. Her eyes were a pale dusty blue.

They stared up widely, inches from him.

“The Cajun?” she asked, suddenly quiet.

“Yes.”

“Good Lord. I almost killed you.”

“Maggie?”

“Yes?”

“Behave?”

”Yes.”

He let her up.

7

SHE SAT against the rear warehouse wall, facing the sea,
watching Durell as he washed off the mud he had plastered on his face and
retrieved his sunglasses from his shirt pocket. He made a point of taking the
rifle with him and keeping it out of her reach. The girl lowered her head
on her forearms and hugged her knees. Everything about he r indicated
exhaustion and defeat.

He wondered when she had eaten last. Now that he had a good
chance to look at her, he wondered if she had been spending the hours since the
attack on the plantation hiding out in the inland swamps. She wore no shoes;
her feet were caked with dried mud and her legs were scratched and dirty. She
was a mess.

“I didn’t know Donaldson had a daughter,” Durell said.

“That’s me. Maggie Donaldson.” Her voice was muffled in the
bend of her forearm. “Listen, it’s not safe here, you know?”

“He never told me.”

“Well, he told me enough about you.” She lifted her head.
“Listen, is it true? You worked with Hugh in Malaysia, long ago? And you take
all your orders straight from General Dickinson McFee, getting all the crappy
jobs?”

“It’s my business,” Durell said.

“But it’s true?”

Durell thought about it. “Yes.”

“Daddy was a little afraid of you.”

“I expect so. Maggie, what are you doing here in Palingpon?”

“I came to visit Hugh.”

“From the States?”

“I was in school there. Working on my doctorate at Yale. I
gave it all up, It was just a crock of shit.”

“Why do you talk like that?”

“Like what?”

“Obscenity is childish,” Durell said. “Why did you come
here?”

“I’m hungry,” she said.

“Yes. Why did you leave school?”

“I told you, it was a crock—”

“How long have you been hooked?"

“What?”

“Those needle marks on your arm.”

“Oh, those.”

“Is that why you left the States?”

“I kicked it.”

“Nobody kicks it,” Durell said.

“Listen, does your grandpa really live on an old Mississippi
paddlewheeler
, down in the bayous?”

“Yes. Did you really kick it?”

“I did. Months ago. Living on an old steamboat would really
be neat.”

“Are you clean now?”

She said, “I mean to stay that way. It was just one of those
things. You know. A friend of mine, a boyfriend, I thought he was fantastic, he
taught me. But how he taught me. The son of a bitch. Great lover. Lousy
bastard. He gave me the
shi
—the stuff.”

“And you’re sure you’re clean?”

“Sure.”

“What made you think I was coming in to kill you?”

“Well, with that mud on your face, at first I thought
you were one of them. You looked like them.”

“I gathered that the assassins were Malays. I don’t look
like a Malay,” Durell said.

“I could eat a horse,” said Maggie Donaldson. “That’s why
I’m getting a bit hippy in the thighs, I mean.

Nerves. Since I kicked it. Since I asked Daddy for help and
he sent me the plane fare to come here from New Haven. I want to eat all the
time, now.”

“You look in fine shape to me,” Durell said. “I heard
the killers were Malays.”

“No, they were not.”

“They were brown—”

“They were white men. Painted up. They were Europeans. Or
maybe Americans. I don’t know.”

Durell was silent.

“Hopped to the eyes,” she said. “I ought to know.”

“Maggie, are you sure?”

“I ought to know.” She nodded emphatically. “They all wore
some locket or medallion or something. I had a good look at them when they came
into the house. I didn’t know they’d already been in Palingpon, already killed
Daddy. They all passed within a foot of me—I was in the downstairs john and
peeked out when I heard them. They came into the house like a bunch of
lunatics. So fast. Maniacal. I was lucky to get out the back door in time. I
didn’t know what was happening. I still don’t. I hid out on the other side of
the plantation, past the trees. It’s a big swamp out there. Then I headed for
the village, the other side of here. Nobody was there but an old man.

He had a radio. He told me about Premier Shang and Daddy.”

“These lockets. Did you get a look at them?”

“Sure. They were all the same. Like gold coins.”

He waited.

Maggie stood up and brushed the tight seat of her denims.
“They had an animal engraved on them. Like a unicorn,” she said.

8

CHARLEY LEE had somehow managed to walk out of the Donaldson
plantation house and had driven away in the rented Toyota. Maggie refused to go
into the house. She never wanted to see it again. She said there was an old
jeep in the village, and if there was any gas in it, they could use that to get
back to town. Otherwise, it was an eight-mile walk.

The jeep was in the village. Nobody else was there, not even
the old fisherman she had mentioned. The houses stood vacant and forlorn,
the fishing boats were drawn up tidily on the beach the other side of the
promontory. The concrete dock where the plantation products were loaded onto
barges stood empty and glaring in the hot sun. The wind had died. The air was
humid, breathless. Nothing stirred. The place was dead.

It was well after three o’clock in the afternoon when Durell
got the girl a room at the Willem Van Huyden Hotel. The room was big and airy,
with high ceilings, wooden fans, louvered windows. A gallery opened out of
french
shutter doors and overlooked the
klong
. It was reasonably quiet,
except for the muted shouts of the sampan men on the canals, a hum of traffic
over a nearby bridge, the muted echo of the gamelan orchestra in the lobby,
getting ready for teatime. A poster in the lobby announced that a Filipino rock
band would play in the bar starting at nine that evening.

Durell ordered a meal sent up for the girl from the dining
room, then went upstairs with Maggie and locked the door from the inside. His
height topped the girl’s by only two inches. He sent her into the bath to
shower and clean up, then went down again to the shops in the lobby, locking
her in first, and bought a batik blouse and slacks, stockings and boots,
a pair of white pumps, a straw hat with a wide brim, several shirts—small-size
men’s—a woven straw purse, a native woman’s dress in colorful silk from
Thailand, somewhat like a Hawaiian
mumu
. He added a comb, brush, toothpaste, toothbrush,
lipstick, powder. He went back upstairs.

She was sitting at the tall windows in a Bombay chair,
wrapped in a towel, her feet tucked under her ample hips. She wasn’t interested
in the things he had bought for her.

“Maggie, I have an appointment at four o’clock with Colonel
Ko. Do you know him?”

“I’ve met him. The local fuzz?”

“Sort of. Will you wait here until I come back?”

“I don’t have any place else to go.”

“Will you stay right here, in this room?”

“Sure.”

“And lock yourself in,” he said.

“You don’t have to worry about me. Why are you going to all
this trouble?”

“Why not?” he asked.

“You’re funny,” Maggie said. “Strange, I mean.”

“How, strange?”

“Daddy told me you were quite an orientalist. Said you speak
half a dozen Asian languages, including Mandarin. Right now, for instance, I
can see you discussing T’ang pottery, or maybe interpreting those crazy bits
from the Tao
Te
Ching
. Is
that the real Sam Durell behind those sunglasses? Or is the real Durell the guy
who came barreling into the warehouse behind that freight car, with your .38,
scaring me half to death?”

“I don’t know,” Durell said.

“You a kind of
schizo
?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“You have the best of both of your likable worlds, is that
it?”

“Perhaps.”

There came a knock on the door. It was the waiter with the
meal Durell had ordered for the girl. The waiter was a quiet, deft, middle-aged
Palingponese in a white mess jacket.

Maggie sat and looked at the food without interest.

“I thought you were hungry,” Durell said.

“I'm not, now. Not anymore.”

He paid the waiter and added a tip, then peeled off several
large notes and put them on the table in front of the girl.

“You’ll need some money, later.”

“No, no,” she said. “I’ve got plenty of money, in the Palingpon
State Bank. Daddy put it there for me. Daddy is—was-—quite wealthy. Now that
he—he—well, he always said I’d have plenty of money when he was gone.”

“Take it easy,” Durell said.

“And now he’s gone, right?”

“Yes. He’s dead.”

“I’ve been too scared to think about it, until now. Last
night in the swamp, all alone, and all. And then you showed up.”

He thought of something. “What made you scream out there
among the trees, when I was in the house?”

“I don’t know.”

“Maggie, don’t lie to me.”

“I wanted you to chase after me,” she said.

“So you could kill me?”

“I told you, I thought you were one of them.”

“One of the unicorns?”

She looked up at him. Her face was clean and scrubbed and
shining, after the shower. He saw that she might be a very pretty young woman.

“Yes, you could call them that,” Maggie said. She looked at
the faint row of needle marks in her left arm.

“I really kicked it, you know. I really did.”

“I believe you.”

“And now Daddy’s left me rich.”

She began to cry, suddenly and soundlessly.

9

COLONEL KO wore his uniform again. His boots gleamed, his
gold braid glittered. His round brown face and black eyes were composed,
self-sufficient. He did not sweat. His boot heels added two inches to his
slight stature.

The mortuary was in a Dutch-style house on a narrow street
off the Embankment, a wide avenue that skirted the waterfront a short distance
from the commercial piers. It was a place the Dutch settlers had tried to use
as a promenade, a century ago, while their sailing ships loaded up with spices
and tin and added to the guilders clinking in their counting houses. There was
no sign over the house to indicate its present use.

Colonel Ko sent the attendant away and led him down the
stairs to the cellars. He snapped a switch and a string of cold fluorescent
lights winked and chattered in the ceiling, then settled down to a steady,
merciless hum. It was icy cold. A large, rather old-fashioned wooden door with
heavy nickel-plated hinges and automatic locks filled most of one end of
the room. Colonel Ko gave Durell a small, apologetic smile.

“It was good of you to be so prompt, Mr. Durell.

You won’t mind the cold inside?”