Assignment Unicorn

by Edward S. Aarons

  M. Jacques Eaux-Vives was anything but careless. He was a banker bred and born to the tenets of security. He had installed infrared heat detectors, cameras triggered by reflective bars, sound instruments built into the terrace rail that flanked his penthouse apartment.

  The leader of the quartet of raiders knew his way; knew where every device had been posted. The others followed him as he threaded his way among the ventilators and the TV antennas. Soft lights glowed from Eaux-Vives’ den, where he entertained Sulaki Madragaffi. They had not quite finished draining their brandy.

  The raiders on the roof had gathered on the terrace at one of the darkened bedroom windows. The window was barred, like all the others, but the leader lifted an arm in signal and one of the four men gripped the bars and began to spread them, grunting a little with the effort as he pressured the steel. The stars twinkled in the velvet sky. An occasional car slid along the quai by the lake. The steel bars opened. The leader reached in a hand and clipped wires. In forty seconds, they were all inside, out of the cool night wind blowing off Lac Leman.

  From there, they went unerringly to the banker’s den.

  It was swift and bloody.

  The leader pointed a gloved hand at Madragaffi and two of his men gripped the African while another cut his throat, almost decapitating him. The brandy glass fell from Sulaki’s long fingers and struck the Sarouk rug, making a small, gentle tinkling sound as it broke. M. Jacques Eaux-Vives reached for the alarm buttons on the table beside his wing-chair. His mouth was open in a silent scream as he looked, unbelieving, at the blood gouting from Madragafi’s neck. Gristle and bone gleamed yellowish-white through the red. Eaux-Vives’ fingers never touched a button. He was a small man, rather plump, with thin black hair that he brushed carefully from left to right in hopeless strands that did not hide his gleaming scalp. Something smashed down on his fingers, breaking four of them. His scream was clapped off by a hand over his mouth, pulling at the flesh of his cheeks. The strength of their violence was like a savage storm. The banker was lifted bodily from his chair and slammed against the wall. A Picasso sketch fell from its hook.

  “Your keys,” the leader said in French.

  Eaux-Vives could not answer. His heart was bursting in his chest. He pointed a shuddering, broken hand.

  “Go get them, Hamlet,” the leader said in English.

  One of the men went into the bedroom. He came back only moments later, holding the small ring of keys.

  “And the vault? M. Eaux-Vives? Do you hear?” the leader asked.

  “Time lock,” the banker gasped. “Cannot be opened.” His face was purple. He was already dying. “Cannot be opened,” he repeated. “I swear to you.” His eyes bulged.

  Softly, “You can open it.”

  "Can—not.”

  “Come.”

  They had to carry the banker to the stairway. There were elevators, but they were ignored as potential booby-traps. On each lower floor, where quarters for various K Section operations had been established, including several transceiver radios, files, records, coding machines, scramblers, arsenals of weapons, the quartet engaged in a storm of destruction. Several fires were started; thermite bombs were tossed at the filing cases. Eaux-Vives was dragged down level after level. His short legs spraddled. The leader carried him as if he were a child.

  The main floor of the bank was not like the open, inviting spaces of a commercially licensed establishment. There was a small circular foyer with a tiled marble floor, with long corridors radiating from it like the spokes of a wheel. Off the corridors were discreet, comfortable paneled offices. Everything at this hour was dark and shadowed. The quartet knew their way around. They made for the rear elevator, an old-fashioned open cage of rococo ironwork. The banker was casually hurled inside as they descended to the vaults. A fire alarm went off. Nobody paid any attention to the ringing bells.

  “Countermand the lock,” the leader ordered. He spoke in English this time.

  M. Jacques Eaux-Vives opened his mouth to speak, shook his head in denial.

  “I—cannot.”

  “Hamlet?”

  The man called by that name moved forward, his feet dancing, an energy in him that kept his body constantly in motion, twitching, jerking, his face grimacing, his head bobbing and weaving like a boxer’s. The fire-alarm bells rang on and on. The leader looked at Hamlet with distaste.

  “Blow it,” he said.

  Hamlet was quick. They moved back down the corridors to shelter from the explosion. Smoke began to curl in the quiet air, drifting down the elevator shaft. When the blast came, it was a dull, rumbling roar. The plastique did its work.

  The master keys did the rest of the work. Only selected boxes were opened. Money poured out, spilling on the marble floor. Securities vanished. Jewels were ignored. Gold bars went into capacious pockets. They worked as a well-coordinated team.

  “All right," said the leader. “Finish him.”

  Hamlet hit the paunchy banker in the chest. The man’s heart, already laboring far beyond its normal capacity, exploded. He sagged to the floor of the vault.

  “Let’s go,” said the leader. “I believe the car is waiting.”

  23

  THE APARTMENT near the Hotel Beau-Rivage on the Quai du Mont Blanc was quiet in the predawn grayness. A light premature snowfall had started an hour ago. Most of the snow melted as it hit the boulevards and narrow streets of Geneva. The lake was dark and silent. The overcast smothered the dim early-morning lights of the old city, across the water. The snow that drifted down gave everything a sense of hushed, silent peace.

  The drive from the innkeeper’s house near Les Diablerets had seemed endless, even though Durell had taken the wide National Route E-4 through the vineyards of Vevey, around Lausanne and the lake toward Geneva. The innkeeper had rented them his little Peugeot for an exorbitant amount.

  The apartment was one of K Section’s security bases. It was always well stocked with food, a variety of clothing, both men’s and women’s, and an assortment of spare weapons. Durell went into the kitchen and cooked breakfast, making bacon and eggs, finding fresh croissants in the refrigerator, fresh sweet butter, coffee. Wolfe went into the bathroom and washed the clotted blood from his abraded face. Wolfe’s eyes under his thick brows were deep-sunk and red-rimmed. When he came out of the bathroom he checked the doors, front and back, jammed chairs under the knobs, and leaned against the wall in the living room, his arms folded across his thick chest, glowering at Durell and the girl. Durell came out of the kitchen with the breakfast. Wolfe shook his head slightly; he didn’t want it. Maggie took one look at the tray and went into the bathroom and was sick. Durell followed her, pushed the door open, stood watching her. When she went into the bedroom and sank down on the edge of the bed, he went with her.

  He saw himself in the mirror, tall and dark and a bit ragged, his eyes strange even to himself.

  “Maggie.”

  “Go away.”

  “Why are you afraid of me?”

  “Because of what you did to Rasmussen. You killed him. You blew his chest wide open.”

  “He was no friend of mine,” Durell said. “Do you feel badly because he kept winking and making passes at you before it happened?”

  “Jesus, Sam, leave me alone. Can’t you see how sick I am? I should have stayed in New Haven.”

  “Stop talking nonsense, Maggie. Be a good girl and tell me why the unicorns want you.”

  She covered her face with her hands. He stood in the doorway, watching silently, not moving to touch her or offer solace.

  “Try to remember, Maggie.”

  “What?”

  “Anything that might be useful. Anything to give us an idea of why they wanted to grab you.”

  She took her hands from her face. Her eyes were dry. “I don’t know who ‘they’ are. How can I remember something I don’t know? I’m not at all sure that Rasmussen was trying to grab me. Maybe he was trying to help me from those other people. How can I know which is
which?”

  “There is something you know that makes them want to question you, Maggie.”

  “Oh, no.”

  “How long were you in Palingpon?” Durell asked.

  She looked blank. “What?”

  “How long?”

  “Three months, maybe. I’m not sure of the time or where it all went. It was a bad time for me, you know. Drying out. There was plenty of the stuff around, you know, in town. Daddy had to lock me up in my room a few times. I needed a kick so bad, I was half crazy some days.” She sniffed and rubbed the inner elbow of her left arm, then looked up at him with a sudden slyness. “Maybe if I got a fix I could remember better.”

  “No, Maggie.”

  “Please, Sam!”

  “No. Your father talked a little to you about his K Section business, didn’t he?”

  “Not much. Nothing important. Nothing I can remember. l can remember the days when he ran his strings of operatives out of Kuala Lumpur better than I can what just happened. I was only a kid then, too. I think he sometimes worked with Wilderman in those days."

  “Yes?”

  "That s all.’

  “You’re sure?”

  “What more do you want? He was put out to pasture, poor old Hughie Donaldson, and still something—or someone caught up with him and tore him to pieces while he was having that nice luncheon with that nice old premier of Palingpon on that nice sunny day.”

  “The same day they came after you at the plantation,” Durell said. “You were out among the trees, hiding from them, when Charley Lee and I got there. You were scared half to death. You knew they were after you even then. What do you know that they want to know?”

  Snow hissed against the window. He heard Wolfe cough from his post at the living-room door. The girl was sitting tailor-fashion on the bed. Her long hair was straggly, hanging down on each side of her face. It seemed to Durell that he had never felt so tired or discouraged.

  The day was brightening; the windows were pale gray.

  “Maggie, where did you first get hooked on the stuff?” he asked quietly.

  She looked at him with a witch’s smile. “Are you still interrogating me? Is that why you dragged me along here, to Rome and then here?”

  He didn’t remind her that it was she who had insisted on coming with him. He said, “You can answer that question, can’t you, Maggie?”

  “Sure. It was two years ago, while I was studying

  for my master’s. So what?”

  “How did it begin?”

  “I wanted attention. I thought I was too tall, too outsize. I was mixed up. I was lonely. Maybe I was scared. So I got hooked. It was kind of nice, at first. I stopped worrying about myself so much, you see. I relaxed. I figured I could be as attractive as any other girl.”

  “You are,” Durell said. “More so.”

  “I kept hoping my stupid schoolgirl dream would come true. I just wanted somebody to come along and take care of me and love me, so I could love him back with all my heart, that‘s all I wanted.”

  “Who first hooked you on the stuff?” Durell asked.

  She still looked at him with the bland face that told him nothing, still watching him with her witch’s smile.

  “That was a fellow student. Handsome devil, he was. Very persuasive. In all sorts of ways. Actually . . . ” She paused and leaned forward, her arms thrust down against the edge of the mattress. “Actually, he turned out to be a recruiter for your agency, Durell—for K Section and then, as I later learned, the Internal Security Bureau.”

  Durell felt a surge of anger. “Tell me who introduced you to heroin.”

  “Rodney Rasmussen. The man you blew apart on the mountain road back there.”

  24

  THE SNOW changed to rain by midmorning, and a heavy fog settled over Lake Leman, obscuring the view of the mountains, and the Palais des Nations, now European headquarters for the UN. The Old Town was wreathed in slowly drifting mists. The air grew warmer, more seasonable. Durell slept for four hours, made an omelet for an early lunch, and then Wolfe turned in. Durell didn’t know whether the girl slept during that time of waiting or not.

  At eleven o’clock the telephone rang. Wolfe stirred, his bulk asleep on the couch, but he did not wake up. Durell let it ring three times, after which it went silent. One hour later he found his coat and went down the staircase of the small apartment house and walked through the drizzle toward the grayness of the lake. John Meecham waited for him on the broad sidewalk of the Quai du Mont Blanc. He wore a tweed cap that looked too small for his big froglike head, and a shabby old gray raincoat. He carried an umbrella against the light rain, but he kept it furled and swung it like a cane. His popping hyperthyroid eyes were bloodshot.

  “Thank you for coming, Cajun,” he said. “You have the girl?”

  “Wolfe is watching her, sir. I thought I’d be meeting Enoch Wilderman here.”

  “I’ve sent Wilderman hack to the States.” Meecham sounded short. “We can’t let every operation sag into neglect because of this one. Is the apartment safe?”

  “No,” Durell said. “I think we’ve been blown wide open just about everywhere.”

  “But the girl?”

  “At least the apartment has security devices. I don’t think it can be breached,” Durell said.

  Meecham touched his elbow and guided him down the wide sidewalk. “Let me tell you about the bank. You haven’t seen it in the newspapers?”

  “No."

  They walked slowly along the Quai des Bergues beside the rushing flow of the Rhone River, where it poured out of the lake to begin its long snake-dance down through France to the Mediterranean. They crossed the river on the Pont de l’Isle and went around the park with its floral clock, the Grand Theater and the Conservatory of Music. From there they chose a narrow street of cobbled ramps and climbed to the old city. The Grand-Rue brought them to the old Roman crossroads, the Bourg-de-Four, a charming square where the narrow streets twisted oil in every direction. If anyone were following them, it was difficult to tell. Passersby hurried along under umbrellas. The rain was not hard, but persistent, a drifting mizzle that came at them from every point of the compass. Durell was hardly aware of it as he listened to Meecham.

  “You must have had a bad time of it last night, Cajun,” Meecham said.

  “Bad enough. We didn’t boobytrap them. They got the money, and now they’ve wrecked our Geneva Central. They have papers, files, more cash, more than enough to blow K Section’s data collection and processing wide open, if it ever gets to the media.”

  Meecham nodded. “You don’t look too well, Cajun.”

  “I don’t feel very happy about it,” Durell said. “I shot Rod Rasmussen back there at Les Diablerets. Maybe I moved too fast.”

  “Fast enough," Meecham said quietly. He paused to stare into the window of an antique jeweler’s shop. “Rasmussen killed LeChaux back in Zurich. Gut-knifed him, left him draped over his own toilet.”

  “I see,” Durell said.

  “I know you don’t like Internal Security, but perhaps you also see now the purpose we serve,” Meecham said.

  “We seem to have been infiltrated everywhere.”

  “Rasmussen is an example. A longtime agent who had to be killed when he went bad.”

  “I wish I hadn’t had to kill him,” Durell said. “We could have learned a lot from him if I could have taken him alive.”

  Meecham pointed with the ferrule of his umbrella into the shop window. “I like that Victorian brooch.”

  “Is anyone following us?”

  “I’m not certain.”

  “Let’s walk,” Durell said. “Look for a gray Porsche.

  I’ve seen it twice now.”

  But they didn’t spot the suspect car again.

  25

  THEY romp down the cobblestone ramps from the Old City to the Rue de la Corraterie. Meecham’s ugly face was compressed in a tight, furious line. He swung his furled umbrella like a short pendulum. The sn
ow on the sidewalks from the fall at dawn had vanished, but the air was still filled with ice crystals.

  “You were right back in Rome, Sam,” Meecham said heavily. “K Section’s security has been breached. It’s a deliberate, specialized attack on K Section. Aimed to destroy us and perhaps all our intelligence defenses.”

  “The unicorns seem to know everything about us,” Durell said. “Sir?”

  Meecham waited.

  “This has to be someone fairly high up. Someone who knows every transfer of funds we’re about to make.”

  “I’ve canceled all future transactions for an indefinite time,” Meecham said. “I cleared it with your Finance officer, Strawbridge, and General McFee.”

  “That doesn’t solve it.”

  “We’ve had a few resignations from the Finance Section lately. Fairly high-up security people. They’ll have to be checked out. Enoch Wilderman went back to the States to take care of that.”

  “Sir?”

  “Yes, Sam.”

  “I want to do it.”