Assignment Unicorn (17 page)

32

“Sam? Sam?”

Durell struggled to sit up. His throat felt raw. His head
throbbed. He got his hands to his sides and pushed, and the beach under him
heaved and swayed, and the stars went spinning across the black sky. Gradually
the thunder in his ears modulated to the sound of the surf nearby.

“Sam? Oh, Sam!”

It was Maggie. He felt her hands on him as she knelt at his
side. The shadow of the wreck was etched on the hard sand. He saw Wolfe’s bulk
loom against the black sky.

"I'm all right,” Durell muttered.

Wolfe said, “You knocked his brains out.”

“Where were you?”

“Dreaming of the angels. I was out cold, myself.”

“You look strange,” Durell said.

“So do you, man. But it’s the first time we’ve beaten them.
They didn’t have any real weapons. They were going to kill you with their bare
hands. I found their diving raft. The surf just brought it in. A small boat
must have dropped them off at sea, a bit offshore.” Wolfe turned his head. “The
security guards are coming. They’re a bit late. The wind must have covered most
of our shots.”

Durell got to his feet. Maggie helped to support him. He saw
a squad of men trotting toward them from the perimeter of the Fort compound.
They were still some distance away, coming down the slope of the dunes on the
point of land that marked the boundary. He looked at Maggie. She tried a smile
that was pitifully tremulous, but to him she looked beautiful.

Wolfe said, “It was my fault. I was running out of steam.
Too many watches, not enough sleep. I took a benny. I think it distorted my judgment.
I shouldn’t have let her slip away, and I should have dragged her back as

soon as I found her.”

Durell looked at the girl. “Why did you leave the cottage
and slip out here?”

Maggie said, “I think I remember what you wanted to know.”

“I already know it,” Durell said.

33

"EAT SOMETHING, Maggie.”

“I can’t.”

“I’m a pretty good cook,” Durell said. The steaks were just
right. He looked at the cot in the living room and saw that Wolfe was asleep.
It was almost dawn.

“I really don’t want anything,” Maggie said.

Durell had slept for four hours. He had showered, changed
his clothes. He had spent half an hour cleaning and reloading the .38 and
checking the action, concerned that beach sand might have harmed the mechanism.
A few telephone calls from the communications center underground had got him
the necessary clearances, papers and equipment he wanted.

Aside from a few bruises and varied stiffness in different
parts of his body, Durell felt well. His throat still burned and felt sore.
Crews from the Fort had removed the bodies of the four unicorn men.

“Why do you have to go away?” Maggie asked.

“I want to finish it.”

“Can’t someone else do it?”

“I want to do it myself,” he said quietly.

“Because they came after you, this time?”

“That’s part of it.”

“And?”

Durell said, “I can‘t trust anyone.”

“Can you trust me?”

There was a small silence. The girl’s eyes, like silver coins
in the gray dawn light, watched him with an anxiety that once he would have
thought pathetic. He was unsure now.

Maggie said, “I told you about Dad and Colonel Ko. About his
involvement with the Palingpon security police. That was it, wasn’t it? That
was what you wanted to know. That’s why my father was killed, isn’t that
right?”

“I think so. Another ‘innocent victim.’ ”

“And who is his replacement?”

“Colonel Ko,” he said reluctantly.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t remember it sooner,” she said. “You
have to remember, I was in a bad way in those days.”

“Are you really okay now?”

“I think I am.”

“Why did you leave the compound?”

She said angrily, “Did you think it was just to lure you
onto the beach so those men in wet suits could get you? I wanted to get away. I
couldn’t know when you’d be back. Wolfe was nice to me. He told me how he’d taken
benzedrine
to stay awake, so he could watch over me.
He told me about his daughter, who shipped out on a bad acid trip. He was very
fatherly, Sam. But he told me to be careful of you. That you didn’t give a damn
about anything except your job. And now you don’t trust me.”

“I didn’t say that.”

Durell looked at his watch and saw it was time for him to
leave, if he was to make his plane.

He said, “I do trust you, Maggie. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have
left you with Wolfe. I won‘t be gone for very long. But what I want to do had
best be done alone. I have a rough idea of where to find the unicorns’
base. I’m going into it, if I can.”

“Oh, God,” she said.

“It will be all right.”

“You'll want an army behind you.”

“That’s just it. An army won’t get anywhere. I figure one
man can do it better.”

“Take Wolfe, then,” she urged. “I’ll be all right. I promise.
I’ll wait for you at my aunt’s house in Connecticut.” She paused. “I’ll wait
for you forever.”

He got up and she rose quickly with him, taking his arm. He
kept forgetting how tall she was. “Keep yourself straight, sweetheart,” he
said. “And leave me your aunt’s address.”

34

LONDON WAS cool and clear for a change. There was no fog.
The city was one of Durell’s favorites, gray and masculine. He had a rental
Jaguar waiting for him at the airport, and although his TWA flight landed
in the middle of the rush hour, he made it into town in just an hour, checking
into the Westbury on New Bond Street in Mayfair. He dialed a number he did not
need to look up and received a barrage of complaints about the failure to receive
funds due recently. He soothed the local Finance officer by explaining that
Joshua Strawbridge’s unexpected and sudden death had thrown Accounting into a turmoil.
The London man was not satisfied, but reluctantly promised him the
information he wanted.

“Half an hour. I’ll get back to you then.”

“I’ll be waiting,” he said.

“Mr. Durell? Mr. Meecham said I was to offer you —ah—the
best men available, if you requested aid.”

“Thank you. Not necessary. Just dig out the data I need on
P. I. Sanderson, the coin dealer. And Dr. Alexander MacLeod.”

“Yes. Half an hour.”

Durell showered, shaved, changed his clothes, checked the
.38, and strapped a knife to his calf. The windows seemed safe enough. One
would have to be a human fly to reach them. Then he thought of the power and
agility of the unicorn men and added bolts to the windows and a lock on the
door, designed by the laboratory men at the Fort. Outside, London slid into
darkness. He closed the draperies, put on a single lamp near the telephone, and
sat at a distance from it.

When thirty minutes had passed, the phone rang. He slid to
the floor, lay on his back, reached for it while it rang twice more, then
pulled it down to him.

The Ops man said, “He’s oil in the country for a fortnight.
Left this morning.”

“Time?”

“Ten in the morning. He has a town house near Wimbledon—a
tennis buff, your Mr. P. I. Sanderson-and a small, very discreet numismatist’s
shop in Belgravia. Want the addresses?”

“Just his country place,” Durell said. “Does he usually take
off in midweek like this, closing his shop, and all that?”

“No, Mr. Durell.”

Sanderson had suddenly left for the country while Durell was
over the Atlantic. The Ops man said, “Mr. Sanderson’s country place is in a
small village near Tower Rising, in Norfolk. Pretty little place, I understand.
The estate is called Stone Circle. Best way is up through Cambridge, on
A10
, then east—”

“I can find my way, thank you,” Durell said.

“Quite certain you don’t want some lads with you? I understand
. . . ”

“Yes?”

“Sanderson is a reputable businessman, not wealthy, but
eminently respectable, you see, quite well thought of—”

“Of course. Thank you,” Durell said.

“Not at all. If at any time—”

“Thank you,” Durell said, and reached up to cradle the
telephone again.

He lay thinking about it. He was being invited to a fortnight
in East Anglia and the Fens. He decided to accept.

35

IN THE MORNING he drove the rented Jaguar to East Anglia. On
the road just outside Tower Rising he found a small inn that offered him a
corner room. The high mist smelled of the sea. The inn was named the Little
Gray Horse. The proprietor, a burly black-haired man with a pipe, suggested the
golf course four miles on the other side of Tower Rising, a tour of the
fifteenth-century guildhall in the marketplace, the Old Book House, or a
quick trip to the beaches beyond the grassy, rolling Fens, although the season
was over. His accent was difficult to interpret, especially around the pipe.

Durell was the only guest. He lunched alone, attended by the
innkeeper’s dark-haired daughter. Tower Rising was a sleepy, quiet village,
with "tall copper beeches, brown-leafed oaks, a tiny populace that minded its
own business in a taciturn manner. The village was surrounded by vast
flatfields
, divided by a network of canals
through which an occasional vessel sailed as if on dry land. On this foggy day
there was little to be seen. After breakfast Durell asked the proprietor about
P. I. Sanderson.

“Oh, him,” the innkeeper said around his pipe. “He’s mostly
in London, these days.”

“I understand he came out for the fortnight.”

“Possibly. He comes and goes, comes and goes, sir. You a
friend of his?”

“Actually,” Durell said, “I’m an agent for an American
collector and I’m just passing through, thought I could catch Mr. Sanderson
informally, while he’s here in Tower Rising.”

“He don’t see anybody at Stone Circle.”

“Is he married?”

“No. Occasional woman with him, though. Different one each
time. He’s London, see, and his ways are different to ours. He doesn’t do much
shopping in the village. Nobody likes him that much. But I shouldn’t be talking
like this. You want to try to see Mr. Sanderson, you get to Stone Circle by
taking the dike road along the canal far end of the village, toward Bury St.
George. About four miles, go over the stone bridge and go another two miles into
the Cots. That’s a wood next to the
Taxted
Fens. Can’t
miss it from there. If they let you in. You’ll be back soon enough, sir.”

“Has he servants at Stone Circle?”

“All men. Three or four of them. Like guards, they are, and
can’t say I blame Mr. Sanderson, considering the stories about the value of the
coins he has in his house."

“Thank you,” Durell said.

He took binoculars and bought light rubber boots at a shop
in Tower Rising and then retrieved the Jag from the
stableyard
behind the inn and drove east. He had no trouble finding the canal and
the dike road. The fog began to thin out, which disappointed him, and a weak, watery
sun shone on the expanses of wide fields, edged with other dikes lined
with tall trees, and an occasional flashing glimpse of white cathedral towers
in the far distance.

He passed two carts and a lorry on the neat, clean road, and
a motor barge in the canal. The breeze felt cold and damp, blowing from the
sea. After four miles, he came to the arched stone bridge. He turned right.
Ahead was a long knoll, a few brick farmhouses and more green fields, a
few haystacks, and a long line of oaks paralleling the road. He met no other
traffic. He almost missed the entrance to Stone Circle. There was no sign, and
he had passed it before he realized there could be no estate here except a few
distant farmhouses. He ran the Jaguar into a copse of tall oaks and parked it
in brush; from the road the car was almost invisible. He felt clumsy in the
boots, but was grateful for them as he moved into the spongy ground alongside
the graveled driveway that led away between the trees. When he saw the
first chimneys of Stone Circle, he halted, chose one of the taller,
sturdier oaks, and climbed quickly into the lower branches. Then he used the
binoculars.

Stone Circle may have been a small Saxon or Roman fort in
ancient times; a red-brick mansion stood here now. From his post in the trees,
Durell swept the horizon beyond and thought he could see the marshes and the glitter
of gray from the North Sea through the slow-moving mists. Squirrels chattered
at him, annoyed because he had disturbed their hunt for acorns. Durell turned
the binoculars on the house. It had steep red-tile gables, an upward thrust of
chimneys at each end, a glass conservatory, gleaming green lawns, a terrace
with a yellow umbrella and white cast-iron chairs cushioned in matching yellow.
He thought he saw movement through thinly curtained
french
doors, but wasn’t certain. A separate structure housed the garage. Two cars
there, a Rolls and a Volvo. No one was in sight. Roses still bloomed in a
garden opposite the garage. There were pear trees behind the house, several
hawthorns, a wisp of wood smoke from one of the chimneys.

He watched and waited.

An hour went by before a man in a chauffeur’s uniform left a
side door of the main house, got into the Volvo, and drove out through the red
brick gateway. There was an iron—grilled gate, double-leafed, but it was kept
open. The Volvo went by beneath Durell’s post in the oak tree and kept going to
the Cots road and turned toward the canal.

Nothing else happened.

The chill mist and damp wind blowing from the sea across the
Fens made him shiver. The place looked innocent. The tree limb on which he sat
began to grow more and more uncomfortable. The birds stopped singing. Durell
hoped it was not going to start to rain.