Assignment Unicorn

by Edward S. Aarons

  Wolfe looked tired. Deep fissures marked his face, running from his nostrils to the corners of his mouth; his cheeks were hollow and he had a gray look to his skin. Only half dressed, he had obviously been asleep on the big couch in front of the hearth, and his voice was raspy when he spoke.

  “Mr. Wilderman isn’t here. He’s on the other side of the island.” Wolfe coughed. “It’s good to see you. We thought you’d been given the deep six.”

  “What about Maggie?”

  “She’s here. Upstairs asleep.”

  “She’s all right?”

  “Fine. Don’t ask me why, but she’s been worried sick about you,” Wolfe said.

  “Why did Wilderman order you both to come here?” Durell asked.

  “He said it would be safer. And if you came back—if—this is where you’d be needed.” Wolfe coughed again.

  “You look like hell. Want a drink?”

  “No. Have you been drinking?”

  “I don’t use liquor,” Wolfe said.

  “Popping speed?”

  “A little. I have to stay awake.”

  “Any international guests arrive yet?”

  “Four came in yesterday. Achmed Mussarib, Paolo Lumbaba, Diem Xu, Colonel Ko—all heads of security in their states. The hotel was opened up for them.”

  “What about the President?"

  “He’s paying a brief visit this afternoon,” Wolfe said. “He’s stopping off on his way to Canada.” Wolfe looked at his watch. “Are we in for a storm?”

  “More than that,” Durell said somberly. “You say Maggie is upstairs?”

  Wolfe jerked a thumb. “Up there, right.” Wolfe paused. His hulking figure cast a huge shadow on the wall opposite the fireplace. “Durell?”

  Durell paused on the stairs.

  “Durell, Maggie’s all right.”

  “Yes?”

  “She reminds me of my daughter.”

  “So?” Durell asked.

  “So you go easy with her, understand?”

  Durell smiled. “You’re getting soft, Wolfe.”

  45

  THE SKY was a heavy, leaden gray. The rain had stopped, and there still was no wind: the ocean was calm, oily, brooding.

  No cars had ever been permitted on Mattatuck Island, and the only roads were footpaths cut through the spruce and pine forests that covered most of the land. There were two high points, with a saddle between each end, running roughly east and west to two coves behind high, granitic cliffs and tumbled boulders, where the wash and drive of the Labrador Current splashed high spume and spray. Each cove had a beach, and there was a hotel on the northern point, designed for wealthy families from Boston and the North Shore, when ladies in Gibson hairdos and gentlemen in bowlers had taken the sea air to cool off from the city’s hot summers. A little steamer had once plied back and forth from Preble Cove, where a branch of the Boston & Maine railroad had a station. But most of the island was still virginal, and the scars of the early resort days were mostly overgrown.

  Durell braced himself against a giant spruce and leveled his binoculars on the hotel. The binoculars pierced the gray morning light clearly. There was a helicopter pad near the hotel and a new beach area beyond the hotel’s broad verandas, tennis courts and a swimming pool, although the pool was now drained and boarded over for the winter.

  Durell studied the scene for a long time from his vantage point. The second hill to the west blocked out his view of the calm, oily sea under the heavy overcast. The spruce trees dripped from the night’s rain. An ominous feeling of waiting filled the atmosphere, as if the storm to come could bide its time and strike when it chose. The binoculars showed him four or five Secret Service men moving casually around the hotel. Two men walked rhythmically up and down the hotel veranda, exercising; one of them wore an African costume, all bright colors and challenging stripes, and Durell judged they were among the early guests.

  “Sam?”

  He turned to look at Wolfe.

  Wolfe said, “How much more do you want?” He held a long coil of wire, a detonator and several packages wrapped in oil-yellow paper. “Gelignite. And what in hell were you doing with all this stuff down in the cellar?”

  “Some of it is experimental,” said Durell. “I used to come here now and then for K Section and try it out.”

  “You’re a demolition expert, are you?”

  “In a small way.” Durell looked beyond Wolfe’s hulk. “Is Maggie being careful?”

  “I only let her string the wires. We’ve made a pretty decent perimeter, so tar, through the trees.”

  “I want more,” Durell said. “Let’s get to it."

  It was ten o’clock before he was satisfied, and then he had no choice, since his cache of explosives in the root cellar under the house was exhausted. Wolfe was ingenious about arranging trip wires, snares, boobytraps, all arranged with three central points. Durell held off the final hookups until he had personally checked each trap. Wolfe considered it a waste when he placed three of the explosive caches above the high cliffs to the east, but Durell, a vision of the unicorns in his mind, with the remembrance of his own experience still in his muscles and nerves, insisted that the cliffs were just as vulnerable as the beach down by the cove.

  Afterward, Durell was able to reconstruct the timing of the mornings events:

  10:15—-First helicopter landing on Presidential pad, eight passengers, all foreign police and security officials.

  10:42—Second landing, ten passengers.

  10:46—Coast Guard patrol begun, one circuit of the island every 28 minutes.

  10:58—Barometer dropping, 29.56.

  11:02—Presidential helicopter lands.

  11:20-Coast Guard patrol boat CG-94965 replaced.

  11:37—Unicorns arrive.

  46

  IT WAS a few minutes past eleven o’clock that morning when Durell slipped aboard the rented cruiser with Maggie. He held her hand tightly, although she was as quick and sure-footed as he. Beyond the entrance to the cove, he saw not one, but two Coast Guard patrol boats, proceeding northerly side by side. He stared at the two vessels for a moment, grunted, and urged Maggie ahead of him.

  “Get below,” he told her. “Please, Maggie.”

  “But what are you going to do, Sam?”

  “I intend to keep you safe. All hell is going to pop loose, any moment.”

  “I don’t want to be safe. I want to be with you.”

  “Never mind. Do as I say.”

  “I wish I knew what you had in mind,” she objected.

  “You’ll find out later. When it’s all over.”

  The cabin was roomy, fitted with two long cushioned benches that could be changed into bunks. Forward was a small, tidy galley, and beyond that, a narrow hatch and three steps down led to the sail locker. Durell pushed the girl ahead, through the galley, but at the bulkhead door to the locker she suddenly balked.

  “Where the devil are you taking me?” She turned in his grip, startled and angry.

  Durell said, “Sweetheart, I’m putting you out of action. No one will come aboard looking for you. Certainly not in the sail locker. And I’ll have the keys, anyway.”

  “You’re locking me in there?” She sounded appalled.

  “To keep you safe, yes.”

  “You work me like a damned slave, setting your boobytraps, and then expect me to hide while you—while you—while you risk your life? I will not.”

  “Maggie, please.”

  She drew a deep breath, staring at him. “Listen, Sam. It was my father they killed in Palingpon. I’ve gone along pretty meekly with you, all this time, hoping it would be ended before now. But I owe it to Hugh, to Daddy, to help end it. I’m not going to hide in the cubbyhole like a scared rabbit—”

  “Keep your voice down,” Durell said.

  “I will not! You can’t cheat me like this. You can’t lock me in here to hide while you go oil somewhere, risking your neck against these madmen. I’m going with you.”


  “No."

  “Well, I won’t hide here. Where are you going?”

  “To the hotel,” he said.

  “And how do you expect to get through the security screen?”

  “Maggie, I know what I’m doing.”

  “So you can slip through, somehow?”

  “I have no question about it.”

  Maggie drew another deep breath. Suddenly she took Durell’s face in her hands, as they stood in the tiny, cramped companionway, and kissed him.

  “Sam, I’m pretty good at playing Indian, too. I’m going with you. If you shove me in there, I’ll just scream.”

  He looked at her carefully for a long moment. Her defiance surprised him. Her anger and determination could not be denied. He had not expected her to rebel, and it somehow pleased him, in a way he had no time to define, at the moment.

  “All right. Come along. We’re wasting time.”

  47

  THE STORM waited.

  Its center was about fifty miles off Prince Edward Island, and inland it was dumping heavy rain. It moved very slowly south-southwest, stalking the Maine coast like some wild predator. Far south of the center, there was an area of calm where the low—pressure center winds had not yet reached. The turbulence seemed tightly controlled. Southward, the sea was relatively calm, although long, ominous swells had begun to move into Casco Bay and along the rocky coast beyond. The swells reached the rocky shore and burst in increasing violence against the stone breakwaters of Maine’s innumerable little coves and island groups. The fishermen stayed in harbor.

  At Mattatuck, a fog still persisted offshore, hanging less than twenty feet above the smooth surface of the ocean. Now and then, the island seemed to reverberate with the thunder of an especially strong swell breaking against the gray granite rocks.

  The Coast Guard patrol boat was surprised to see a companion vessel loom out of the fog bank and take up a position alongside. The skipper, a young lieutenant, assumed the new vessel was an additional security measure pending the President’s arrival. He did not deny the other vessel’s signal requesting permission to come aboard, although he did signal by radio to Preble Cove Station that he had company on his patrol. It was far too late when the skipper saw the launch alongside and noted that the men who swarmed over his port rail all wore gray jumpsuits and were heavily armed.

  The Coast Guardsmen never knew exactly what hit them.

  The storm began to move.

  48

  ENOCH WILDERMAN was making a welcoming speech to the ISCOPP delegations. He promised lectures on mob control, riot prevention, the surveillance of subversives, the training of security forces, the arms they

  needed, the methods best suited to swift and accurate reaction to public disorders. The security heads in the audience listened with appreciation. Wilderman spoke with certainty and confidence. His voice, a bit too thin, carried authoritative conviction. He seemed pleased by his position on the dais; his gaunt figure slouched a bit behind the lectern, at ease, his gray hair tumbled, his Franklin glasses shoved on top of his head.

  “What is it?” Maggie whispered behind Durell. They were hurrying down an aging corridor, unevenly floored under worn carpeting, in the hotel. Durell carried a long-barreled .357 Magnum; remembering the incredible vitality of the unicorns, he had put aside his stubby .38.

  “One more chore to do.”

  “Where is the President?”

  “He’ll probably have lunch with the security representatives, and make a brief welcoming speech to them.”

  “And then?”

  “We’ll see.”

  The government had installed a radio station in what had once been a row of bath-house lockers at the east end of the hotel. A sixty-foot steel tower, securely guyed against the Maine coast winds, kept it steady. The bath house had been connected to one wing of the old hotel, so that guests could change their clothes there before venturing onto the beach. Durell moved quickly down the long third-floor corridor, with Maggie half a pace behind him. A rusting fire-escape ladder led down to the ground again. Durell opened the door carefully and looked outside. The fog bank seemed to have receded from the island’s coast. He noted the length and intervals between the big swells coming in from the north. The air felt a bit colder. Below were the tennis courts, but no one was in sight. Most of the guards would be inside the hotel, with the President, or patrolling the beach perimeters. Durell led the way down, glancing up only once at Maggie’s bottom as she followed him on the ladder. A side door to the bath house was locked. He tried one of the small square windows. It yielded with a creak of

  rotted wood. He waited, listening. There was no alarm. In a moment he was inside, helping Maggie through.

  A hallway, flanked by locked doors, led straight to the radio shack, at the base of the steel transmission tower. Durell flattened against the plank wall of the corridor, raised his Magnum, and listened. There was no sound from inside. He looked at Maggie. Her eyes were pale gray in the dim light. She nodded, managed a thin smile. Durell backed oil, kicked stiff-legged at the door just below the lock, and burst in.

  The wiry little man seated with earphones over his head at the bank of transceiver equipment started to swivel in his metal chair.

  He wore a gray jumpsuit.

  The unicorns were already here.

  Fast as the man was, Durell leveled the big .357 Magnum at his head and breathed, “Hold it, Marcus. Just like that. And don’t be a fool.”

  The man named Marcus froze. He was not, after all, a mental robot. He looked bug-eyed at the gun, then at Durell’s face.

  “It’s you? But you’re dead—”

  “Not quite. Get up out of the chair. Slowly. Very carefully. Hands on top of your head.”

  “You’re dead, though,” Marcus insisted. “We thought you‘d drowned, or crawled into a hole somewhere to die.”

  Durell said harshly, “I know Dr. MacLeod told you the drug killed unless it was renewed. Well, you see it doesn’t kill, after all. I managed to survive. You don’t have to hang in there as a unicorn if you don’t want to. You’ll live, given proper care. Over there, against the wall. Maggie?”

  She stared at the unicorn with surprised eyes.

  “Take his gun. Over there, on the steel desk.”

  “I’ve got it.”

  “Cover him. He can move like blazes. Don’t take any chances, understand? If he bats an eyelash, shoot his head off.”

  “Right. Is he one of the ones who killed my father?”

  “Never mind. Just do as I say.”

  “I’d like to kill him right now.”

  “Good. Do it if he even looks like he’ll move. He may be a superman, but he won’t get far with his head blown away.”

  The unicorn named Marcus said, stunned, “But we all thought—all of us—we had to keep getting the drug to stay alive.”

  “Shut up.”

  Durell sat down at the radio equipment. There was an automatic relay for a Mayday signal, aimed at Preble Cove Station. He set it, checked the SOS, locked it in place. The equipment hummed. The electronic tape began to revolve, sending out the appeal for help in a repetitive signal. A minute later, he picked up his gun again and looked at the unicorn man.

  “Turn around, Marcus. Very, very slowly.”

  Durell hit the back of the man’s head with the gun butt, hard and decisively. He had to repeat the blow before the man sagged, his knees buckling, and crashed to the floor of the radio room. Maggie yanked out a length of telephone wire and lashed the man’s wrists and ankles, tied them together until his body bowed painfully backward. Durell wasn’t sure it would hold against the man’s unnatural strength when he came to. But it should keep him immobile long enough.

  Durell left the radio room first. Immediately he felt the jab of a gun in his ribs. He stopped cold. Maggie trod on his heels, bumped against him.

  Colonel Ko stood in the outer hallway, a small smile on his neat, round, brown face.

  “You, too, Miss Donald
son. Neither of you should move. Please. Drop your weapons.”

  Durell looked into the man’s black, fathomless eyes. “Do as he says, Maggie.”

  “Very wise,” Colonel Ko murmured. “Are you surprised to see me, Mr. Durell?”

  “No. You‘re one of the ISCOPP delegates, aren’t you?”

  “Naturally, but—”

  “You’re with the unicorns, right?”

  “The uni— Yes. Yes, that is correct. They are here, you know, for their demonstration of super police force personnel. To sell their methods. I have already agreed to the contract. Do not do anything rash, Miss Donaldson,” the little man said suddenly. “Stand over there.”

  “Take it easy, Maggie,” Durell said. He pulled her aside. Her eyes were metallic as she stared at Ko, Hugh Donaldson’s contact with death. Colonel Ko looked into the radio room and saw the unconscious bound unicorn in his gray jumpsuit. He clucked his tongue in surprise. Apparently he did not recognize the automatic whirring of the Mayday signal for what it was. He was too preoccupied with keeping Durell and the girl in his view.

  “You haven’t Smashed the radio equipment?”

  “No,” Durell said. “We didn’t have time.”

  “Very well. Come with me.”

  He picked up Durell’s and Maggie’s guns, held them loosely in his left hand, and pushed them away from the radio room. He seemed to be in a hurry.

  There was a series of small balconies on the second level above the meeting room, and Colonel Ko urged them to the curtains behind one of them, three minutes later. Durell heard a familiar voice from the dais. It was the President, making his welcoming speech to the ISCOPP delegates. He spoke in platitudes, about the need for security and law and order throughout the world, the need for international cooperation between states to discourage acts of violence that spanned the borders of the world’s nations, the hope that techniques developed among them would add to the security of peoples the world over. His mellifluous voice was calm and sure. Looking down upon him, Durell could only admire the man’s poise and political ease. For the President, it was simply another speech, saying much and meaning little.