Assignment - Quayle Question

by Edward S. Aarons

  THERE HAVE BEEN NO STRANGERS AT CA’D’ORIZON FOR A LONG TIME. YOU MAY CONSIDER YOURSELF PRIVILEGED. AS YOU CAN SEE, I HAVE SOME MEDICAL PROBLEMS THAT I PREFER NOT TO BE MADE PUBLIC. THERE IS THE MATTER OF PROTECTING THE' IMAGE OF Q.P.I. OF COURSE.

  “You can’t speak, is that right?”

  MY LARYNX HAS BEEN EXCISED. CANCER. PROSTHETIC DEVICES TO GIVE ME A VOICE OF SORTS HAVE FAILED.

  “And that’s why you haven’t been broadcasting your editorials over your radio stations for the past two months?”

  CORRECT. WOULD YOU LIKE SOME COFFEE? I HAVE SOME LOUISIANA TYPE, WHICH I UNDERSTAND YOU PREFER. OR PERHAPS SOME BRANDY? DINNER?

  Durell shook his head again. It was cold in the room. Outside, beyond the wide window that faced the sea, the early night was marked by the thick sea mist that rolled in over the beach. The three men who had escorted them stood quietly by the tower room doors. Durell was not sure if he was a prisoner here or not.

  He said, “We’ve come about your daughter, sir.”

  YES. DEBORAH. HAVE YOU FOUND HER?

  “We’re looking for her.”

  AND MARTIN PENTECOST?

  “He’s missing, too.”

  YOU HAVE NO LEADS?

  “Some. Have you heard from her kidnappers?”

  Rufus Quayle stirred in his chair. His hovering fingers over the teleprinter were still for a moment while his eyes, under the bushy white brows, glared at Durell and then at Deirdre.

  ROBERT, BRING ME SOME BRANDY.

  “Yes, sir.” One of the men promptly left the room.

  MR. DURELL, DO YOU KNOW ABOUT THE COMPANY?

  “They’re after the Q.P.I., yes.”

  MARTIN PENTECOST, MY GENERAL MANAGER, HAD MADE A STUDY OF THEIR ACTIVITIES. THEY HAVE BEEN ACQUIRING, BY THREAT AND VIOLENCE, CONTROLLING INTERESTS IN A NUMBER OF MEDIA CHAINS SIMILAR TO Q.P.I. ARE YOU AWARE OF THIS?

  “That’s what brought you to our attention.”

  MY DAUGHTER DEBORAH HAS THE CAPACITY TO INTERPRET, ANALYZE, AND DRAW CONCLUSIONS FROM A MASS OF DATA. MARTIN WISHED HER TO DEDUCE WHAT SHUMATA’S NEXT STEP WOULD BE. HE WAS FAIRLY CERTAIN THAT Q.P.I. WAS THE NEXT TARGET, BUT HE WANTED CONFIRMATION FROM DEBORAH. NOW THEY HAVE BOTH DISAPPEARED. THE PATTERN SEEMS CLEAR ENOUGH.

  “Have you heard from the kidnappers?”

  NOT YET.

  “Are you willing to pay to get Deborah back?”

  A REASONABLE RANSOM, YES.

  “In money?”

  THEY HAVE NOT YET NAMED A SUM.

  “They want Q.P.I., Mr. Quayle.”

  THEY SHALL NOT GET IT.

  “Nothing else will satisfy them.”

  I WILL NOT SELL Q.P.I.

  “Not even to save your daughter’s life?”

  NOT FOR ANYTHING.

  Robert came back with a tray holding a brandy decanter and glasses. Rufus Quayle waved the tray negligently aside, his eyes fixed on Deirdre.

  REMARKABLE.

  “What is, Uncle Rufus?” she asked quietly.

  YOU LOOK MORE LIKE MY DEAD WIFE, IN HER YOUTH, THAN DEBORAH DOES.

  “Does that please you?”

  IT DISTURBS ME. DO YOU RESENT THE FACT THAT WE HAVE NOT COMMUNICATED THROUGH ALL THESE YEARS?

  “No. It doesn’t matter.” Her hand felt cold in Durell’s. “I’m sorry you’re ill, that’s all.”

  A MATTER OF STUPID PRIDE, HIDING LIKE THIS. IT WILL PASS. HAVE YOU BEEN THREATENED, TOO, MY DEAR?

  “Not directly.”

  The piercing blue eyes glared at Durell. The hovering fingers flew over the keys of the teleprinter. Letters flickered and raced across the screen, forming words and sentences.

  DURELL, I HAVE HIRED THE BEST PRIVATE AGENCIES I CAN LOCATE TO FIND DEBORAH. SO FAR, THEY HAVE TURNED UP NO CLUES WHATEVER TO HER WHEREABOUTS. I WANT TO FIND HER. PERHAPS YOU CAN DO IT FOR ME. WILL YOU HELP?

  “We’re working on it, Mr. Quayle, for reasons of our own. Not to save Q.P.I. for you, if it’s merely commercial and international business pressures, but to prevent terrorism and anarchy anywhere in the world. To put an end to it, Mr. Quayle. It’s going to stop right here. We have our own interests in getting the criminal people at the top of I. Shumata.”

  YOU KNOW WHO THEY ARE?

  “Not all of them, no, sir.”

  I’D LIKE YOU TO WORK FOR ME, MR. DURELL.

  “I have a job already, sir.”

  STRICTLY FOR ME. NAME YOUR PRICE.

  “You couldn’t pay me enough, Mr. Quayle. I don’t hire out for private enterprises.”

  DAMN IT ALL, I WANT MY DAUGHTER BACK!

  “But you won’t give up Q.P.I. for her.”

  NO. NEVER.

  “Not even if they kill her?”

  DO YOU THINK I AM A MONSTER?

  “In some ways.” Durell stared levelly at the sick giant. “In other ways, I’m glad you won’t surrender to these people. They want to control the media, to move the minds of people all over the world, for their own purposes; in this case, I suspect, it might be war. We don’t want any of that to happen. It’s imperative that this zai-batsu’s growth, through violence and terror, end right here.”

  THEN WORK FOR ME, DURELL.

  “I’m already employed, Mr. Quayle.”

  FIND DEBORAH!

  “I intend to. But you have a problem, Mr. Quayle.” SEVERAL, I AM SURE.

  “One major problem,” said Durell. “Are you sure you’re quite safe here?”

  SAFE ENOUGH.

  “But I found you here. A simple matter of reasoning it out, checking your other facilities to see if you were living somewhere else in the world. It came down to Ca’d’Ori-zon. The Shumata people know you are here, too. The man named Tomash’ta who was killed on the beach belongs to them. He was a kamikaze killer, a Red Lotus type. If he came, they’ll send others.”

  SO MY LIFE IS IN DANGER?

  “Yes.”

  YOU WANT ME TO BE MOVED ELSEWHERE?

  “As soon as possible.”

  A long arm gestured toward the teleprinter screen.

  I LIKE IT HERE. THIS IS MY HOME. THIS IS WHERE I STAY. NO SON OF A BITCH IS GOING TO MOVE ME OUT.

  “They might. Feet first.”

  I’M NOT AFRAID OF THEM.

  “Then you’re not very wise,” Durell said.

  NOBODY SPEAKS TO ME LIKE THAT.

  “It’s time someone did. You’re being stupid. You think you’re safe here, but you’re not. You’ve already been exposed. I don’t care how good you think your men are. They’ll get in, sooner or later. They’ll make it all the way in and put a bullet through your head—if not worse.”

  I’VE BEEN THREATENED BEFORE.

  “Not like this.”

  I WONT LEAVE HERE. I DON’T WANT POLICE PROTECTION. A LOT OF STUMBLE BUMS. I’M BETTER OFF HERE.

  “How much do you love your daughter, Quayle?”

  I TOLD YOU, I’M NOT GIVING AWAY Q.P.I. FOR HER.

  “But suppose they manage to kill you? What happens to Q.P.I. then?”

  WHAT’S THAT?

  “Your hearing isn’t impaired, is it?” Durell said savagely. “It’s time you faced reality, old man. I don’t care how powerful you are. Who can you trust to keep Q.P.I. out of the hands of these people?”

  NOBODY. JUST MYSELF. AND YOU CAN’T TALK TO ME—

  “Suppose they kill you? Assume it as a possibility, if not a probability.” Durell's voice was deliberately harsh. His words echoed in the big stone tower room. “If you’re dead, who runs Q.P.I. then?”

  MARTIN PENTECOST.

  “But they’ve got him. Would he hold out the way you do?”

  A troubled frown moved the heavy brows on the old eagle’s face.

  I’M AFRAID FOR THE WORLD, DURELL.

  “So am I.”

  Q.P.I. HAS A LOT OF POWER TO MOLD PUBLIC OPINION. I’VE ALWAYS DONE MY BEST TO USE THAT POWER PROPERLY. I DON’T THINK MARTIN WOULD HOLD OUT.

  “Right,” Durell said. “And if they manage somehow to kill you, which I think they’ll d
o if you stay here, who inherits everything you own?”

  THAT’S NOBODY’S BUSINESS BUT MINE.

  “Who is your heir, Mr. Quayle?”

  There was a long pause. The distant boom of the night surf on the beach came dimly through the thick walls of the house. Mist moved in gray ribbons against the black windows. The old man stirred uneasily in his chair. He touched the scarf at his throat and looked impatiently at the teleprinter buttons at his fingertips. He started to tap at them, changed his mind, and looked angrily at Durell.

  YOU’RE A HARD MAN.

  “Who inherits Q.P.I., Mr. Quayle?” Durell insisted.

  DEBORAH, OF COURSE.

  “And where is she now?”

  DON’T KNOW.

  “You do know. You know these people have her.”

  YES.

  “And those people have no scruples about using any methods they care to try on her. They’ll make her sell. It will all be done nicely and legally, just as all the other networks around the world were yielding to whoever is behind I. Shumata. I think it’s one man, Mr. Quayle. With distorted ideas of manipulating the world. He’ll get Q.P.I. from Deborah.”

  There was a long silence. The boom of the surf sounded louder. The old man did not move for several moments. He seemed to be staring at something Durell could not see, something in the far past or the future. Quayle touched the scarf at his throat again and seemed to shrink within the shabby fabric of his worn bathrobe.

  YES. YES, GODDAMN YOU. WHAT DO YOU WANT ME TO DO?

  Part Four

  THE QUESTIONING

  Chapter Eleven

  Deborah felt as if a violent storm had ripped wide paths of destruction through the orderly fields of her mind. She did not know how much time had passed since she had seen Martin’s body hanging from a hook somewhere in this desolate place. Perhaps a day. More likely, two days. She dimly remembered a night, then another, passing by while she was ignored in her cell. It was not the same cell that she had occupied before her first questioning. This one had an arched roof, in Mexican-Indian fashion, and she could see out through a narrow barred window over the empty, heat-hazed plain below. Like a princess in a tower, she thought with grim irony. That’s what she had always been, in a sense. A prisoner of her father, first, who used the queer talents of her mind, and then of Q.P.I., too, whose every facet was another grain of wheat in the fields of her mind.

  “Miss Quayle?”

  She did not turn away from the barred window. It was the same voice, mellifluous and cold, filled with a pungency she could almost smell, like fire and brimstone from some other nether world whose existence she had always, as an intelligent woman, calmly denied.

  “Miss Quayle, you will proceed with the attendant. You will not be blindfolded this time.”

  Her mouth formed a denial. “No.”

  “Can you hear me, Miss Quayle?”

  The voice came through some amplifier; it had a thin metallic quality. There was a pleased, unctuous tone in it. As if some new horror was ready for her, and the fat man could hardly wait to demonstrate it.

  “It will do no good to pretend illness. Of course you are ill, sadly. I will not say I regret it. Perhaps you will now realize the seriousness of your unhappy situation. A woman like you has always come to expect happiness, as it is called, as your right. Something you deserve, eh? But you have been extraordinary. You are extraordinary. Blessed with such strange talents, eh?”

  She would not reply to the hypnotic, honeyed words. Like the serpent of evil in the Garden of Eden. Through the barred window of her cell, she watched purple shadows move and lengthen across the barren wilderness of the desert. She could not remember the first day she had spent here, after seeing Martin’s mutilated body. She tried to shut out the memory. Nothing moved in the flat plain far below the cell window. The sky remained blue and cloudless. She had been unable to see anything alive down there.

  Food had been presented to her on metal trays, slid under the bottom of the heavy planked door. The first day she touched nothing, neither the simple meat and rice, nor the pale yellow wine in its pewter cup. There had been utensils, nothing sharp she could use as a weapon to turn upon herself and end this nightmare. But on the second day of her imprisonment she had fought upward, like a drowning swimmer seeking the pale, glimmering light of air above. She had spent hours minutely examining the environment of her cell, looking and listening, exercising her senses as she had never done before.

  The walls were of rough stone and adobe. Some of the plaster was loose, and she could scratch it in thin, powdery flakes from between the blocks of stone. But it would take months, without tools, to work a single block loose from the outer wall. Even then, she suspected that below the cell window there was nothing but a sheer drop of about a thousand feet to the desert floor. She had given up, and ruefully nursed her bleeding fingertips and broken fingernails.

  The door was of heavy oak planking, cut to fit the rounded arch at the top. The strap hinges were of roughly, forged iron. There was no handle on the inside, nothing she could grab and shake the door with. No amount of pressure could make the door move measurably.

  Now and then the image of Martin’s body and of the gross fat man who had questioned her drifted across her mind. It was like something unspeakably black and wicked. Yes, evil. That old-fashioned word. Satanic, even. A Messenger of Satan. Then her mind formed a denial, insisting on rational thought, and she picked herself up from her slumped position of despair and continued her careful examination of the cell.

  It offered nothing.

  It certainly offered no hope.

  From studying the desert below, she guessed that she might be in New Mexico, or even in the barren desert of Baja California. She could not be certain. But when her searching fingers traced the image of a cross on the middle panel of the cell door, she felt confirmed in her estimate. There had once been a cross of metal fixed to the oak plank, and decades, perhaps centuries, of slow, dry weathering had left its mark, even though the door had been sanded and oiled and refinished not too recently.

  Perhaps she was in a monastery somewhere.

  But she heard only dull, brazen gongs now and then. Not church bells. Gongs. And through the cell window, where the hot wind of the day blew erratically, as if the air currents were deflected by the shape of the mesa or the form of the building in which she was imprisoned, she had heard chanting, four or five times through the day.

  Hardly Gregorian, she thought.

  She had heard something similar once when she had traveled with Martin years ago on a business trip to Kuala Lumpur. But this could hardly be Malaysia, or anywhere in the Orient.

  There was rattling of the locks on the other side of her cell door.

  “You will come to me now,” said the voice. “Please do not make the attendants force you to obey.”

  She bowed her head and turned.

  “All right,” she whispered.

  ****************************************

  “Miss Quayle, have you thought about your father?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’ve been thinking about Martin.”

  “Ah.”

  “Of what you did to him. And why you thought it was necessary to kill him so brutally.”

  “You truly loved Martin?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you also love your father, do you not?”

  “Yes.”

  “But your affection for Rufus Quayle is different?”

  “Of course.”

  “Because he trained you to work for him?”

  “I don’t know what you mean by that.”

  “My dear Deborah, Rufuse Quayle recognized your peculiar feats of memory, your ability to correlate and integrate varied data relating to Q.P.I., from the time you were six years old, did he not?”

  “He trained me to exaggerate my mental capacities, yes.”

  “But you had an inborn gift, true?”

  “So p
eople say.”

  “From your earliest years, you were trained to memorize various corporate structures, both large and small, within the Q.P.I. organization?”

  “It was meaningless to me then.”

  “But you developed a capacity for detail and the ability to see relationships between one commercial enterprise and another, almost a gift of industrial development foresight, is that not correct?” “Yes.”

  “He came to depend on you as a living, breathing, walking business file?”

  “Yes.”

  “A living computer?”

  “Everyone’s mind can operate as a computer. The most intricate and infinitely developed machine known in the universe. Billions and billions of cells, synapses, neural connections that make our computers look like Tinker toys.”

  “But not everyone has developed your abilities?”

  “I suppose not.”

  “You agree you have an extraordinary talent?”

  “If you say so.”

  “You are surprised I know this thing about you?”

  “Not many people do. My father. Martin did. That’s all.”

  “You played the part of the daughter of an extraordinary and eccentric billionaire very well indeed. You lived the normal international social life. You belonged to what I believe was once termed the international jet set. Perhaps that term is now outdated. But you trained yourself to present a facade of athletic prowess, of hectic social activity, an international playgirl, so to speak.”

  “Yes.”

  “All as a coverup for your true talents?”

  “Yes.”

  “What do you know about the I. Shumata mercantile trading corporation of Nagasaki, Japan?”

  “Very little.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Very little data is available in the open market.”

  “Was Martin concerned about I. Shumata?”

  “He mentioned it, yes.”

  “In what way?”

  “It was part of the problem he wanted me to solve.” “Did he tell you what the problem was?”

  “No.”

  “Can you guess now?” “Yes.”

  “Tell me what you guess.”

  “I’d rather not.”

  “Tell me, Deborah.”