“Yes.”
“In your apartment there?”
“On Park Avenue. Yes. God, I’m getting tired of you, whoever you are.”
“Did you discover what motivated Martin’s urgency?”
“No.”
“Then what changed your mind about meeting him?”
“I don’t know. A woman’s prerogative, I guess.”
“But you' do not think or feel or live much like a woman, do you?”
“I suppose not.”
“But you did meet Martin in New York?”
“Yes. You know the answers, all of them, don’t you? Zermatt was not our last meeting. You knew that. But you let me babble on.”
“Babbling lies. A pattern begins to form. When did you meet Martin in New York?”
“Three days ago, I think.” “For how long?”
“When are you going to let me go? What do you want? Money? I can arrange money for you, you son of a bitch. Is that what you’re after? Is that why you broke in and snatched me and took me here?”
“Here? Where are you, Miss Quayle?”
“I don’t know.”
“And who am I, Miss Quayle?”
“I don’t know. You sound fat.”
“What?”
“The way you breathe. Like a fat man.”
“Yes. Immaterial. I believe we were discussing—”
“I can smell you, too.”
“Yes.”
“Something bad.”
“Like fire and brimstone?”
“Maybe.”
“Can one smell evil, Miss Quayle?”
“If what I smell is evil, yes.”
“You are correct. This world is held in hostage to the Dark One. I am his Messenger.”
“Oh, boy, you really are freaked out.”
“We shall find out who is sane and who is not, Miss Quayle, before our interviews are finished.”
****************************************
They had come in with a rush, after she answered the bell at the service door. Their efficient violence was utterly appalling. She was stunned and shattered by the force with which they took her. The brutality. She had seen violence before, but she had always kept a cold, iron control over herself. Like that time the jetliner crashed at the end of the runway in Boston, and all the passengers panicked, clawing at each other to get out. She had remained calm, keeping seated as the safest thing to do in the face of the mindless savagery of what had been a peaceful, civilized planeload of human beings.
But this attack was different.
Perhaps it was the silence with which they worked. There were three of them, wearing stocking masks, and they looked unnatural, faceless entities whose whole beings were absorbed in what they had to do. The apartment was on the fourteenth floor, a quiet and old-fashioned place in the Sixties, high above the noise of traffic and the city’s usual congestion. They were ruthless about everything, slamming her backward against the wall with a jolt that knocked the breath out of her. All without warning, without the slightest hint of what was to come when she innocently opened the door.
The tallest and heaviest one kept her pinned to the wall, her wrists gripped with iron strength that held in it the tremors of incipient violence. The others, both of medium height, although one was shorter than the other and all but danced as he moved, like a ballet performer on his toes, ravaged the apartment with a speed and thoroughness she could not believe. She turned her head to watch them move from the service door, down the hall into the living room. Soft crashing sounds echoed the destruction of the Italian Renaissance furniture. There were quick ripping sounds, soft padding noises, several thuds and bumps she could not understand. Her breath stopped in her throat.
When they came back, one said, “Not here.”
The voice was just a voice. It meant nothing.
“Lady?”
“Yes.”
“You’re Deborah Quayle?”
“Yes.”
“Where is your husband?”
“I have no husband.”
“Don’t get funny. You know this is serious. Where is Martin Pentecost?”
“He’s gone.”
“And the papers he brought?”
“He—he didn’t bring anything.”
She was appalled at the terror that shook in her voice, like a latent scream out of a dark and primeval jungle. The three men wore ordinary suits, dark, neat, expensive. White shirts. Polished shoes. Clean hands and fingernails. One of them smelled of expensive French cologne. She thought that was an error, the only identifiable thing about any of the three.
“When is he due back?”
She looked from side to side. Her wrists hurt where they were pinned high above her head by the man who pressed her to the wall. She knew better than to try to knee him as he crushed her backward.
“What?” she asked.
She could feel their silent eyes watching her, gleaming, behind the nylon of their stocking masks. She knew what their question was. They weren’t going to ask her twice. Terror that defied all her previous concepts of intelligent and calculating behavior moved in her like a tropical storm.
“I don’t know when Martin is coming back.”
“He’s due at eight, isn’t he?”
“If you say so. Look, if you want money, jewels—” None of them laughed.
She was told, “We want you to say when.”
“Yes. Martin is due at eight o’clock.”
“We’re on time,” one of them said. “He’s always prompt. We’ll wait the five minutes.”
Her apartment became a strange place, like an alien land. The smallest of the trio, the one who moved like a dancer, gave her a small mocking bow from the hips. An Oriental gesture. But he did not speak, so she couldn’t tell. The five minutes became an eternity. She had agreed to meet Martin here at eight o’cock. Whatever it was that had so troubled him back in Switzerland had intensified, to judge by the urgency in his voice when she spoke to him on the phone.
“No stripping for me this time, Debbie,” he had told her. “No tricks. It’s a matter of life and death.”
“Oh, Martin.” She had discounted his melodrama. “I’m sorry about last time in Zermatt. It was stupid of me.” “You’re never stupid, Debbie. Deb, listen. You haven’t seen your father since Zermatt?”
“No.”
“He’s not at Ca’d’Orizon?”
“No.”
“All right. I’ll see you at eight. Debbie?”
“Yes?”
“I really need you, Debbie.”
“I need you, Martin.”
“But this is different. We’ll talk about it.”
“Yes.”
The front door of the apartment gave off a melodic chiming sound. She felt the grip on her wrists tighten. She had not seen any weapons evident among the trio, but their very silence, the way they moved, the way they had so speedily ransacked her apartment—looking for what? —gave her warning enough. She kept silent, sick with a sense of betrayal. Even if she shouted a warning, she knew Martin would be taken in as unprepared a manner as she had been.
She whispered, “You’re not going to hurt him?”
“It depends,” one of them said.
“On what?”
“Maybe on you, Miss Quayle.”
The chimes sounded again. The dancer went to open the door. She heard Martin’s exclamation, heard a quick, muffled thud, heard the door close sharply. She suddenly strained against the grip that kept her flat against the wall. She was strong, she knew all sorts of tricks, but the man who pinioned her was too good for her capacities, too ready, too well-trained. Something sharp hit her stomach and now, when it was too late, she cried out to Martin, and then something was pushed against her face, over her mouth and nostrils, and she couldn’t breathe. She tried to struggle for another moment, and then everything became of no importance. She wanted to weep as she felt the curtains dropping, one by one, like clouds drifting in thickening layers o
ver the fruitful fields of her mind.
****************************************
“Miss Quayle?”
“I want to know what your people did with Martin.” “You may learn all that in due course. Did Martin ever explain his problem to you?”
“No.”
“Not over the phone, when vou and he appointed to meet at your apartment?”
“No. Martin rarely talked of intimate business problems over the telephone.”
“But of course he did. Daily. From wherever he happened to be, on Rufus Quayle’s orders.”
“That would be routine business. He wouldn’t talk about this thing that troubled him.”
“This thing that required your peculiar talents to solve?”
“I suppose so.”
“And he never hinted what its nature was?”
“I suppose it affected Q.P.I. interests.”
“Nothing beyond that?”
“I told you, he didn’t even hint to me what it was.”
“Was this not unusual?”
“Our relationship, since the divorce, is unusual.”
“What was he supposed to bring you on that evening?” “Some papers he wanted me to study. Some computer output to analyze.”
“But he had nothing on his person when we intercepted him at your apartment, my dear child. How do you explain that?”
“I can’t.”
“You look dejected, poor girl.”
“I feel dejected. How long does this go on?”
“As long as necessary.”
“Let me go. Please. I’m worried about Martin. Do you have him? I want to see him.”
“Why didn’t Martin have anything with him, if he was coming to see you and ask you to study something for him?”
“I can’t explain that.”
“But you must.”
“I simply can’t.”
“I see. You are obstinate. Unusually loyal. Do you realize that your life is at stake?”
“I don’t care.”
“And Martin’s?”
“Martin is an innocent.” “No one is innocent in this affair. No one in the world. Do you not care what has happened to him? And what will happen to him if you do not cooperate?”
“What have you done to him?”
“You will see.”
“I can’t tell you what I simply don’t know.”
“About Martin?”
“Yes, about Martin.”
“But you know so much about Q.P.I., do you not?”
“I suppose so. But nobody knows it all. Not even the computer memory banks. Maybe not even Rufus.”
“You refer to your father by his given name?”
“I think of him like that.”
“And you have not seen Rufus Quayle for how long?” “Months and months. Maybe a year.”
“And where is he now?”
“I’ve told you. I don’t know.”
“My dear Miss Quayle. Do you realize how much I have stretched the limits of my patience?”
“You stretch mine, too.”
“It is said here and there, in the media and in the international business, financial, and industrial circles, that of all the thousands of members of the Q.P.I. complex, you, his daughter, and you alone, always know where Rufus Quayle may be reached. You, and you alone, always know where he is.”
“Are you after my father? Is that your real aim?”
“Please respond to my question.”
“It’s not true. I used to know, always, where to reach him. Rather, it was the reverse. He always knew where to reach me. When he needed me.”
“For your—ah—instincts? Your talent?”
“My talent is like ashes in my mouth.”
“You are a brilliant woman, Miss Quayle. Do you not agree?”
“I’m a freak.”
“Because of your abilities to remember, to collate, to integrate, to see relationships between diverse items of data that no one else, and no computer, can see?”
“That’s my talent, yes.” “And you have lied a third time. You do know where Rufus Quayle may be reached.”
“No.”
“You defend him and his privacy, even at the risk of your own life? Do you do that?”
“I told you—”
“Has Rufus Quayle ever shown you the slightest hint of affection?”
“No.”
“Or paternal love?”
“No.”
“Yet you love him?”
“He’s my father.”
“Answer me, please. You love him?”
“Yes ”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. I shouldn’t. He hasn’t ever been a real father to me. But I love him.”
“And so you are loyal to him?”
“Yes.”
“Out of love? Not fear?”
“Perhaps a bit of both.”
“And where is he, Miss Quayle?”
“I don’t know.”
“And what did Martin want you to solve?”
“I don’t know.”
“My patience, for now, has come to an end.”
****************************************
The small dancer type, the man who had bowed to her with that odd, mocking Oriental gesture, was the leader. She never had a chance to see what they had done to Martin. She was blindfolded, with such swiftness and dazzling efficiency that there was no opportunity, absolutely none, to struggle again. They had led her out the back door of the apartment and down to Park Avenue, onto the ramp that led to the underground garage below the building, and from there she had been pushed into a waiting car. She tried to listen to their voices, to tape them in her mind so she could identify them later; but they rarely spoke, and their orderly plan proceeded smoothly without any need for them to direct each other.
They did not take Martin with her, and she wondered about that, and then realized that one of the original trio was missing, not in the smoothly driven car. So Martin was with the absent third man. She felt an ache of worry in the pit of her stomach. She felt outrage and anger at being the victim of what was obviously a kidnapping. She felt violated. A number of possibilities rippled through her mind. It could be just a criminal kidnapping for ransom. If so, they were fools, she thought bitterly. Rufus would never pay a cent for her. That was the way he was. Proud and indomitable, stubborn and unyielding, whether it was a commercial deal or a personal matter. (But she knew little about her father’s personal life.) Rufus Quayle was too ruthless in his own right ever to yield to a simple criminal ploy like this.
Perhaps it was something else. A matter of industrial espionage? Yes, that could be it, she thought. If so, then Q.P.I. would get her free. The conglomerates within conglomerates that represented the empire of Rufus Quayle, all seeded and fertile and growing and related to each other like the field of wheat within her mind—the conglomerate had no emotion except that of self-preservation and growth. She was too valuable to Q.P.I. for Q.P.I. to desert her. They would gain her release, eventually. They would pay the price for her return.
The world was a place of terror, of international pressures toward violence, playing a politics of fear and death and blackmail and wildly irrational plots that, incredibly, caused sovereign nations to bow meekly to debasing and degrading demands. Yes, she thought, that was it.
Relax, she told herself.
It will be over soon enough.
They won’t hurt Martin, either.
She was aware of the cool September air, the smells of traffic in the street, the rush and push of passing cars. And then there was an airport, somewhere out in the country, maybe Westchester, she thought, judging by the turns her captors’ oar made. She was pushed into a plane, a small jet, and they took off with the swift efficiency that marked all their moves.
After that she was not so sure. Whatever had been impregnated in the cloth over her mouth had worn off swiftly, or partially, so her attention was dreamlike, her span of concentr
ation dimmed and attenuated. She was not sure how long the flight lasted. She guessed it was almost four hours, but it could have been longer or shorter; she could not tell.
The landing was rough, which meant a small or ill-kept private airstrip. They made sure her blindfold was still secure, and then hustled into another car. She was aware of an abnormal chill in the air, a sharp biting cold that made her shiver. She felt the car climb and climb. The air grew even colder. It felt dry. She was wearing only the simple little black frock with which she had meant to meet Martin in her apartment. No one in the oar spoke or complained or thought to give her something warmer to wear.
Then she was in a building, and the contrasting wave of hot, humid heat struck her like a blow.
The heat in the building was something she would always remember. It was like something out of a tropical rain forest. She could not understand it.
And then her cell.
And the silence.
She was left blindfolded. She waited for some time, for long minutes after she heard locks snap and bolts thrown home. No one came to her. She sensed she was alone.
She reached up and untied the blindfold knotted at the back of her head.
She was still blind.
The darkness seemed absolute.
She wanted to whimper, to cry out, to yell and scream. Terror tore her mind apart. She simply stood in the center of a blackness as deep as the deepest part of black interstellar space. She bit her lip and tasted the salt of her blood, and refused to make a sound.
Finally she sank down to her hands and knees. The floor was of stone. It felt warm under the palms of her hands. She lay down on her side, as if floating in the infinite darkness of space.
And waited.
****************************************
“Deborah, you have been hostile and negative toward me.”
“What do you expect?”
“I have no more time for you. I believe it is now necessary to demonstrate to you that this is not a game we play, that my intentions are most earnest. I will not be balked by any devices you imagine will keep me from learning what I wish to know.”
“I don’t know what you want.”
“I want you to know that when I ask you a question, I intend to receive a proper reply.”
“All right. I’ve done so.”
Assignment - Quayle Question Page 6
