Assignment - Quayle Question (21 page)

The naked fat man made a growling noise and tried to snatch at the girl to use her as a shield. Durell fired one shot at him. The slug smashed away the fat man’s nose, tore through his skull, and blew bits of bone, blood, and brains in a thin spatter against the yellow-stained walls of the cell. The fat man went backward, thick arms wind-milling, and crashed to the floor, dead.

“Watch the door, Andy.”

“Right. Is she your girl, Cajun?”

“No.”

“The Quayle girl?”

“I think so.”

Durell walked slowly to the cot. For a long moment, he didn’t know if the woman on the narrow pallet was alive or dead. Her eyes were open, staring at the ceiling, but she had not stirred or given any sign of awareness as to what was happening. She did not turn her head or look at Durell as he approached her. Then he saw the faint lift of her naked breasts as she drew in a slow breath.

“Deborah?” .

A thin whimpering sound came from her open mouth. “Deborah?”

Her eyes stared blindly upward, not turning to look at him. Andy made an impatient noise at the doorway. The girl breathed in again, a thin whispering, sighing sound. There were scratches on her face and her stomach, and he saw that her left hand was bandaged, where a finger was missing. He could not imagine the ordeal this girl had gone through during this past week in the hands of Dr. Mouquerana Sinn. But he could recognize what had been taking place in this bloody little cell, when he looked at the dead man, sprawling in obscene nakedness against the far wall.

“Cajun, let’s go,” Andy called impatiently.

“Stay here with Miss Quayle. Throw that blanket over her. She seems to be in shock.”

“Damn it, I don’t want to stay back.”

“She’s important. I’ll get in touch as soon as I can.” “You can’t go in there alone, Cajun.”

“I have to.”

Durell pushed past him and out into the corridor again. A wide flight of stone steps led upward at this end, toward the next floor, beyond two landings. He moved swiftly and silently, not checking to see if the DIA man obeyed his orders. He did not rate his chances of success against Mouquerana Sinn very high.

A door opened at the top of the dark stairway, and a monk stepped out in the shaft of pale yellow lamplight.

Durell’s gun jumped up. Another monk appeared, and then another. Five of them, altogether. They did not seem to be armed. Neither did they have the little black kites tied to their waist belts. He eased the pressure of his finger on the trigger.

The first monk appeared to be an American. There was a Chinese, a black man, and another older white. The fifth to appear in the silent tableau at the head of the stone steps, surprisingly, was a young Korean girl. The group simply stood and watched him as he paused below.

“Please, sir,” said the American. “Do not use your gun. We do not believe in violence.”

“Who are you?”

“Dr. Sinn allowed us to remain here after he leased this place. We asked that we may be permitted to act as caretakers for the Maharanda Shrine, and maintain Miss O’Hara’s living quarters, pending Dr. Sinn’s departure and the return of our brothers and sisters.”

Durell moved up to the head of the stairway. From the landing, a short hall led to an open door into what looked like a communal dining room. The monks stepped back as they looked at his gun. The Korean girl blinked and looked tearful.

“Please,” said the leader again.

“Where is Dr. Sinn now?” Durell asked.

“He is in Miss O’Hara’s living quarters. Is Wendy all right? We thought we heard her scream. We know she came back here. They treated her disgracefully.”

“How many men are here with Dr. Sinn?”

“He is a false Maharanda. He and all his people are false. We realize that now. He came in the plane with five others. There were others who came and went. A Japanese man arrived with him, departed, returned, then left and did not come back. But he always kept five with him.”

Durell nodded. The odds were a bit better than he had hoped. He had taken out the one who came to the cantina down in the village, at Vincente’s. He had killed the fat man who had tormented Deborah Quayle. And there was the one he had shot in the lower corridor. Dr. Sinn had only two men left. They would be his best, of course. Under normal circumstances, Sinn would be vulnerable now. But he held the most potent weapon of all, in Durell’s mind.

He had Deirdre.

He spoke to the Korean girl.

“Will one of you take me to Dr. Sinn?”

“But we—”

“Walk ahead of me, then. All of you.”

The Korean girl whispered, “We are afraid.”

They looked helpless, this little band of idealists, these seekers of peace. Only in isolation, apart from the world, could they pursue their quest for tranquility. But despite their flight from the world, it had come to them, and there was no place for them to go now.

“Lead the way,” Durell insisted.

He gestured with his gun. Reluctantly, the five people in their simple black robes turned and walked slowly ahead of him, while he herded them as a shield and a barrier against any of Dr. Mouquerana Sinn’s devices.

He heard a bell ring, and then a gong announced a loud, vibrant alarm. The monks hesitated and looked back at him. Then they went on, herded ahead by his gun. There was still another short hallway, then a small antechamber. The monks had turned it into a chapel of sorts. Incense choked the air, burning before a plain, stone sculpture of Buddha with eyes downcast and a small, introspective smile on the carved lips. The American monk hesitated. His shaven head glistened in the light of stone Chinese lanterns that burned at either hand of the smiling Buddha.

“Go ahead,” Durell urged.

“Yes, do come in, Mr. Durell.”

It was the voice of Dr. Mouquerana Sinn.

The huge chamber was a part of the original monastery, with an arched ceiling from which chunks of plaster had fallen long ago, revealing the original brick with which the first monks had built the structure more than three centuries ago. The light came from a large candelabra of silver, holding thick, white candles. A wide picture window of plate glass, obviously installed recently by Wendy O’Hara, reflected their images against the blackness of the desert night and the high, starry sky. Durell turned to the thronelike chair occupied by Dr. Sinn. The stout man smiled serenely at him. At another chair, drawn up to a plain pine table, Deirdre sat in stiff hostility. One kited monk stood beside Dr. Sinn with a stubby automatic rifle ready; the other stood behind Deirdre and held a long, slender knife at her throat.

The other monks crowded in ahead of him. Durell could smell their fear.

“Dee?” he said quietly.

“I’m sorry you’re here, Sam. But please don’t pay any attention to me,” she said in a whisper. Her face was pale, but her back was straight and her head was haughty, and she showed her defiance in her bright, angry eyes. “I’m sorry they took me, darling. Marcus couldn’t help it. We both did the best we could. They came in saying you’d been hurt at the cantina.” She did not look directly at Durell. “It’s all right, though. Don’t mind me. Kill him, if you can.”

Dr. Sinn chuckled. “How noble of you, my dear. Do you offer yourself as a sacrifice? And are you prepared to have me kill these innocent young people, these disciples of peace, that Durell uses as a shield? Send them away, Mr. Durell. They are merely a nuisance. Their presence can change nothing. Or would you have their lives on your conscience, my dear boy?”

The monks looked at him with pleading eyes. Durell did not doubt that Sinn meant what he said. He nodded, and as one they turned and squeezed past him, their slippers scuffing on the stone floor, their coarse black robes rustling. None of them spoke. The last one out, the little Korean girl, quietly closed the heavy plank door.

Dr. Sinn chuckled again. “I rather expected you to let them go. You have the American temperament, Durell. Noble and self-sacrificing and unwilling to use helpless victims to further your aims. But you see Miss Padgett before you, as close to death as the edge of Mahmoud’s knife. Your gun is useless, although you point it at my heart. Will you fire at me? Deirdre will die before your bullet kills me. Again, I call upon your idealism to do nothing foolish. We will simply have a friendly conversation, you and I, and resolve this impasse.”

“We are not friends,” Durell said.

“But we can be reasonable enemies. Within an hour, I expect my plane to return again from the East Coast. A few minutes later, I shall leave this crude, disappointing place.”

“And where will you go?” Durell asked. “You’ve lost the game. You’ve lost Tomash’ta, and even though you killed Yoshi Akuro in Virginia, when he took over after his brother’s death and rebelled against what you were doing with I. Shumata trading corporation. You’ve certainly lost Rufus Quayle and Q.P.I.”

“I have his daughter,” Sinn said placidly.

“Yes, I’ve seen Deborah. She’s worse than dead.”

“But still a useful tool. How have I lost Rufus Quayle?”

Durell said flatly, “Mr. Quayle is with us. He is safe.

You will never reach him. He’s still stubborn and determined never to sell out to you.”

“My dear Durell, you know better than that. Time is on my side. What is time? A week? A month? A year? Can you keep Rufus Quayle safe indefinitely? You know our business. You know that, given patience, anyone can successfully achieve a killing. Sooner or later, the victim is exposed to the patient man. I have the time and the patience, sir. Your Rufus Quayle will yield.”

“And you’ve lost Eli Plowman.”

“Ah, yes. Another useful tool shattered. A competent man. His fault lay in always trying to cover his bets, eh? He led you on and on, from one trap to another, second-guessing his efforts to eliminate you. So he led you here, too. Well, you see what Plowman’s worth is to me. Is he truly dead? I rather hope so. He was too accustomed to commanding his own organization, and not too happy in taking orders from me.”

“He’s dead,” Durell said.

“And you are here. He did that for me, at any rate. You axe here with Deirdre Padgett. So I have you all, after all, eh?”

Mouquerana Sinn seemed pleased and jovial. He did not bother to look at Deirdre, seated at the table where Deborah had been interrogated. One of the thick candles in the ornate candelabra sputtered and went out. Sinn turned his head slowly and stared at the remaining light. Behind his eyes was the ruby glitter of madness. His tiny feet, that could scarcely support his great, gross bulk for more than a few tottering steps, dangled several inches above the stone floor. He wore a dark-red robe that did nothing to conceal his vast belly and thick chest; his head seemed small in comparison to the rest of his body. His face, that curious Eurasian mixture of features that had haunted Durell’s dreams for a time last year, seemed to emanate the evil that the man espoused.

Dr. Sinn spoke carefully.

“Another candle will go out in approximately one minute, Durell. And then another. There are ten candles in all. One by one, they will extinguish themselves while we talk. At the end of that time, when we are in darkness, Mahmoud will draw his knife across the young lady’s throat. Deirdre will die. You can be assured of that. Nothing will stop him. It is a device that amuses me. But I am sure you will agree to my terms long before the last candle dies and darkness comes to us all.”

“What terms do you suggest?”

“First, naturally, you will produce Rufus Quayle for me.”

“Impossible.”

“Not here, of course. Not now. But soon. You will return to your abominable K Section and use your wits to shake him free. And then you will bring him to me.”

“And Deirdre?”

“The young lady and her foolish, stubborn cousin will remain with me, of course. You will be paid well, incidentally. And you will have no choice, afterward, but to work for me. There will be nowhere else in the world for you to go, naturally. You are one of the best, Durell. I admit it. You could be most useful to me.”

“Rufus Quayle will never sell Q.P.I. to you.”

Another candle went out.

“I have been successful against stubborn men before,” Sinn said smoothly. “What is money, after all, compared to life? Most men become reasonable when I confront them with such a choice. If they do not, they are destroyed and other men become my tools. You and I have spoken of this before. Power is the ultimate reward for man. I crave it. I must have it. It is my destiny, even my duty, to possess it. More than jewels or women or even wealth, the ability to sway the destiny of mankind yields the highest reward. It can come to conquerors at the head of armies; but alas, I am not an emperor of material things. I command no heads of state as yet, no weapons of war. Would that I did! Still, there are other ways, you see.”

“You would like to control the minds of men,” Durell suggested.

“The power of communication media has been well illustrated in these days of advanced technology. I have made a start. I have acquired most of these tools. The network is almost complete. Already, I have tested the machinery of my media. There is war between several African states, revolution in Asia, and the peoples of two European nations have been angered with each other to the point of violence. In the Mideast, more war will most assuredly break out soon.

“All this has been done through suggestion, my dear Durell. Through messages that gradually instill the flames of passion and intolerance in the minds of men. It can be done here, too. With Q.P.I., the majority of middle America can be swayed in one direction or another. Even the most sophisticated society can be brought to an emotional pitch of self-destruction. I shall succeed. And although you checked me once before, as you say, I rise again, and in the future you shall be my good lieutenant.”

Two more candles sputtered and died.

There were shadows in the comers of the big room now. Durell moved a little to the right, away from the massive planked doorway at his back. He kept his gun pointed at Mouquerana Sinn’s heart. A little star twinkled through the plate-glass window. The guard at Sinn’s left hand stirred impatiently. A bit of pressure on the man’s trigger-finger, and Durell would be blown apart by the explosive bullets in the cartridge chamber.