Assignment Unicorn

by Edward S. Aarons

  “You worry too much, Colonel.”

  Colonel Ko said, “And Donaldson’s daughter-the girl you placed in the Willem Van Huyden Hotel—”

  “Your people are very good, Colonel.”

  “She could tell you nothing?”

  “Nothing.” Durell paused. “I would like her to have exit papers from Palingpon prepared immediately.”

  “You will take her with you?”

  “I just want her to be free to leave, that’s all.”

  “Of course. In two weeks, when the money—”

  “Tomorrow,” Durell said.

  Colonel Ko thought about it, then nodded. He turned away as the sergeant of the firing squad came up and saluted. The soldiers were ordered into a ragged line in the shade of the sapodilla tree. The prisoner hung limply from the stake in the center of the courtyard, in a bright shaft of sunlight that pierced the leafy foliage above.

  Nothing about the man indicated that he knew where he was or what was about to happen.

  12

  DURELL TOOK an Air India flight to Bombay, via Singapore, and found tickets for a westward Pan Am connection on to Rome. At the Palingpon Airport that morning, Maggie Donaldson joined him. Her long hair was still skinned back into its tight, schoolmarmish bun at the nape of her neck. He was again surprised at her height.

  She squinted into the hot sun and did not smile.

  “Hi,” she said.

  “A coincidence?”

  “No, I found out which plane you were taking.”

  “You want to come with me part of the way?”

  “All the way, Sam.”

  “You should go home,” Durell said.

  “I don’t have any home. Just an old aunt in New Haven. All I have is the money Daddy left me. I’m a rich young woman.” She spoke flatly as if it didn’t really mean anything to her. “I went to the bank today and they advanced me enough to keep me going until the lawyers clear everything up.”

  Durell said, “What about the old aunt in Connecticut?”

  “We’re not that close, Sam. My bad habits rather turned her off.” Then after a pause she added, “I really have no home, no friends. Except maybe you.”

  “I’m going to Rome,” Durell said.

  “Fine. Me, too.”

  “I’ll be quite busy.”

  “I’ll keep myself occupied visiting the ruins.”

  “I don’t want you with me in Rome. You’d be safer back in New Haven demonstrating to your aunt how easy it is for a girl of strong character to kick the habit.”

  “Nuts. I’m sticking with you.”

  13

  IT WAS raining in Rome.

  Durell lay on the bed in the Hotel Vittoria and read a book in Mandarin Chinese he had picked up in a stall near the Piazza Navonna. It was a collection of poetry written by the sixteenth-century Shantung poet Tan Ch’ien. The poems were pretty little pieces dedicated to nature. He could say he read it to keep up his linguistic skills, but in fact he found solace reading Tan Ch’ien’s poems.

  “Sam?”

  It was warm in the room, and he and Maggie lay naked under the sheets in the comfortable bed. There were small ornamental balconies below each of the three tall windows, and through the curtains he could see the old Roman wall that marked the boundaries of the Borghese Gardens.

  “Sam?”

  “I’m reading.”

  “Where did you learn to make love?”

  “Everywhere.”

  “Oh, wow.”

  She was silent a moment.

  “Sam?”

  “Yes, Maggie.”

  “Isn’t this nice?”

  “Yes.”

  “I mean the rain.”

  “Yes, the rain is very nice.”

  “And Rome.”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s so wonderful about that damn book, Sam?”

  “It’s very difficult to read. Either there are mistakes in the calligraphy or the poet was bombed out of his skull. For instance, in this passage Tan Ch’ien says the violet willow tree was having intercourse with a yellow tiger.”

  “Why don’t you put that book down and make love to me?”

  “Again?”

  Maggie unpinned her hair and it was gorgeous, falling in long rippling waves, as red as firelight seen through a darkling wood. She turned on her side and stared down at him, her eyes silvery in the rainy light.

  Her strong hip made a beautiful line as she rolled down on top of him. “Put the book away.”

  Her fingers traced the lines of his mouth. He felt the soft pressure of her breasts on his chest. She wriggled completely atop him. “What are you really worried about?”

  “The telephone,” Durell said.

  “Why?”

  “It doesn’t ring.”

  “Are you just waiting here in bed with me because you’re expecting a phone call?”

  “Pm expecting a phone call,” Durell admitted. “It’s an hour late.”

  “From who?”

  “Whom,” he corrected her. “You studied at Yale?”

  “From who?”

  “Can’t tell you. It’s just overdue.”

  “Screw it. No, not the phone. Me.”

  Not long afterward, Maggie said, “When I was a kid—which wasn’t so long ago, I guess, although most fairy tales begin with ‘Long ago,’ or ‘Once upon a time,’ meaning the same thing. When I was a kid, I used to my myself to sleep and then I’d make myself have a pleasant lullaby dream, you know, I’d think about what I’d like to have happen to me. You notice, I was not aggressive, I didn’t dream of making things happen, I dreamed of things happening to me.” She sat up on the bed. The rain still fell on the streets of Rome outside. “No, I won’t tell you.”

  “Why not?” Durell asked.

  “You’ll think I’m stupid.”

  “What was your lullaby dream?”

  “What’s your real job?”

  “I work for the government,” Durell said.

  “Do you really mind my tagging along with you like this?”

  “Not yet.”

  “You’ll get tired of me because I’m so voluptuous.

  I wish I were bony and willowy.”

  “You’ll do.”

  “Anyway, in this childhood dream of once-upon-a-time, I used to cry myself to sleep by inducing this dream about how I was in deep trouble, a lonely maiden in distress, and along came a tall handsome hero, maybe about your height, maybe with dark hair like you, very competent, very capable; and he’d take me to his place, see—it was raining, like today, but there was a big fireplace—and he’d straighten everything out for me. I was grateful. Boy, was I grateful. I became his slave, because I loved him and was so grateful. I adored him. And finally he came to love me.”

  “And?”

  “Then he got bored with me.”

  Durell didn’t say anything.

  Maggie rolled over with her back to him. Her voice was briefly muffled. “Stupid, huh? Stupid, pissy-eyed, maidenly dreams brainwashed by a male—chauvinist—pig world. Out of touch with where it’s really at.”

  “It’s not women’s lib ” Durell said.

  The rain came down.

  The telephone did not ring.

  “Sam, why did they kill my father?”

  “I don’t know,” Durell said.

  “Yes, you do. He was the pay-off man for one of your departments, wasn’t he? He was going to slip some good old Yankee dollars to Colonel Ko, back there in Palingpon, right?”

  “That doesn’t concern you. Eat the pasta. It’s the best fettucini Alfredo you’ll find this side of Brooklyn.”

  “It’s fattening,” she said. “Of course it concerns me. It was my father who was killed.”

  “And Premier Shang,” Durell reminded her.

  “They were after Daddy, though, weren’t they?”

  “Maybe.”

  “So. Why?”

  “I told you, I don’t know yet."

  “But you’r
e going to find out?”

  “I’m trying to.”

  “Stop looking at the telephone, Sam. How did those weirdos know Daddy had the money? And anyway, it wasn’t such a huge sum. Not really huge. Like, they could have busted a bank and hauled off a lot more, right?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Like it was a deliberate slap in the face to you and your people in K Section, that’s what it was like. Like a special challenge, check?”

  “Right.”

  “Oh, boy. You admitted something. I’d like a drink. I’d like to digest what you just admitted.”

  He slid out of bed and went to the small bar that the manager, who was a friend of Durell’s, had arranged in the room. He mixed negronis for them, using one part Campari, one part Stravei vermouth, and one part Beefeater’s gin. He poured them into big brandy shifters, added ice and a splash of soda, and handed one to Maggie.

  She tasted. “Delicious.”

  ’ “Better than that damned needle?”

  “I told you, I kicked it.”

  “For real?”

  “I’m clean.”

  “I’m beginning to believe you,” Durell said. “But these negronis will bomb you out of your skull, Maggie.”

  “Will it make me sexy again?”

  “You’re sexy enough.”

  “I mean, this afternoon.”

  The telephone rang.

  14

  DURELL went to the telephone. He did not pick it up. After three rings, it was silent again. The room was quiet, Rain dripped softly from the copper-green gutters just above the windows. Several taxis argued with each other in an exchange of horns and dim shouts from the drivers in the street below. His watch read four o’clock in the afternoon. Durell’s tall, muscular frame looked loose and angular as he waited beside the telephone table. He was not conscious of his nudity. He had scars marking most of his darkly tanned body, among them a long one along his right ribs that went all the way around under his arm. The scar was not that old, hadn’t formed a hard white line yet. Maggie hadn’t asked about it. He kept his head slightly cocked to the left, his dark-blue eyes absent and distant.

  The telephone rang again, and this time he picked it up precisely on the second ring.

  “Amberjack?”

  “They’re biting beautifully,” Durell said.

  “This is Angler.”

  “Hello, Mr. Meecham.”

  “Are you tapped?”

  “No."

  “Sure?”

  “I’m sure,” Durell said.

  “But you’re not alone?”

  “No. You’re late, Mr. Meecham.”

  “Much too late. They surprised us. Bad news. Maybe you’d better meet us outside. Inside the gate, in the gardens."

  Durell looked at the rain-dappled windows with distaste. He looked at Maggie, snug and warm and bountiful in the bed. She smiled at him. Her pale eyes looked silvery, reflecting the rain.

  “Twenty minutes,” he said.

  “Now.”

  “Ten, then.”

  “All right.”

  Durell hung up.

  15

  HE HAD bought Italian boots, a raincoat, a Borsalino hat, a Santini sportcoat of nubby brown-gold material, and dark green slacks. He ignored the hat and did not bother with a necktie. Maggie asked if he would be gone long. He scarcely heard her, but shook his head negatively.

  “Keep the door locked.”

  “Sam?”

  “It’s business,” he said.

  He did not kiss her goodbye. It was as if he had suddenly opened a door and stepped into another place, another dimension, distant and separate from her. She felt a sudden fear for him. She watched soberly as he thrust his snub-barreled .38 into the elastic waistband of his slacks.

  “Don’t leave the room,” he said.

  “All right.”

  “I mean it.”

  “Yes, Sam.”

  He went out, waited until he heard her bare feet pad to the door, listened to her throw the bolts and click the lock shut. Then he went down in the elevator, nodded from the small lobby floor into the bar where the bartender was mixing drinks for some September tourists, and stepped out into the rain. It was a short walk to the Via Veneto. The misty rain had hardened into a steady downpour. He turned right, threaded his way through the metal chairs and tables under a canopy that Stretched to the curb. In a few moments, striding beside the hissing, turbulent traffic, he went through the old Roman gate into the comparative serenity of the Borghese Gardens. The trees dripped, and there were puddles on the pedestrian walks. He turned right again, inside the thick walls, and saw John Meecham and two other men standing in the shelter of a small wooden summer house, like a tiny bandstand, amid a copse of towering beech trees. There were no other pedestrians. Lights began to twinkle here and there through the landscaped shrubbery. The flowers in their immaculate beds drooped and nodded their bright autumnal heads under the beating of the rain.

  “Hello, Cajun,” Meecham said, as Durell mounted the wooden steps to meet them. “This is Wolfe. And Andrews.”

  They shook hands. Durell kept his attention on Meecham. He said, “What did you mean, we‘re too late? How did they surprise us?”

  “They took over at Da Vinci. The airport. Killed four people, including the pilot. Got the money. We thought they’d try en route from the airport, or at the Fremont House. Before we got it to the bank. But they took us at the airport instead. So we were too late.”

  “Four people killed?” Durell repeated.

  “Bystanders.”

  “And they took the money?”

  “Three hundred thousand.”

  “How did they get into the case‘? The attaché case?” Durell sounded angry. “It was chained to the courier’s wrist.”

  “They just cut off his hand. Zap. Took the case, the money, the chain, and poor George’s hand with them.”

  The younger man Meecham had introduced as Andrews walked to the wooden rail at the edge of the shelter and began to vomit into the shrubbery below.

  It was a question of who watched the watchmen.

  Durell accepted John Meecham’s branch of K Section, the Internal Security Bureau, as a necessary evil, perhaps. But he did not like it, and rarely agreed to work with the shadowy men within ISB, regarding them as a form of Judases, pariahs, and snoops whose secretive surveillance of K Section’s own men was often dubious and always a prickly subject with General Dickinson McFee.

  He supposed it was in proper conformation with the government’s basic system of checks and balances. The problem of who spied on the spies was a fact of life. Even the best of men were subject to human frailties and weaknesses. The work in Durell’s shadow world was subject to abnormal stresses and strains, loneliness, fatigue, constant terror.

  Durell had rarely encountered Meecham's security teams, and while he felt he had nothing to fear for himself, he knew of abuses and personal vendettas reaching scandalous proportions, especially during the time when Enoch Wilderman, an old pro in the business, had run the ISB as a small bureaucratic empire unto itself. The ISB men knew they were outcasts from the small, tightly knit groups of men dedicated to the defensive work of K Section’s troubleshooting teams.

  John Meecham had cleaned house somewhat when he had been appointed to head the ISB some time ago. But Wilderman remained as second in command, too powerfully entrenched in the private bureaucracy he had

  built to be totally dismissed. No one knew who the strings of men he ran might be, or what they were doing. Their funding was separate from K Section’s, which gave ISB an independence of command and activity.

  Durell never knew the exact parameters under which the Internal Security Bureau functioned. John Meecham was an extraordinary man, a walking encyclopedia of data which often seemed pointless and random, but which always correlated in the end toward problem solutions. He was perhaps the ugliest man Durell had ever known. Short and squat, he was built like a beer keg, and every inch of him wa
s spring steel. His general appearance was toadlike; he had bulging, pale-green eyes, a fiat brow, a lumpy jaw, straight small teeth usually clamped around an unlit cigar. His thick black hair grew low on his brow. His ears were too big. His shoulders were out of proportion, like a wrestler’s. Ugly. But the green eyes were brilliant, and his proficiency and encyclopedic mind could not be denied.

  The rain drummed steadily on the roof of the pergola. The man named Andrews stopped vomiting up over the rail. The man named Wolfe just kept watching Durell with a steady, dark stare.

  Andrews was a Foreign Service man attached to the American Embassy, and Durell did not pay much attention to him. Wolfe was another matter, with his steady, unwinking stare. He was a big man, burly in the shoulders, and under his salt-and-pepper suit, Durell suspected solid muscles and any amount of weaponry. Wolfe was Meecham’s man. His pale-gray eyes seemed to be taking Durell apart piece by piece, with unwarranted hostility, and Durell finally said, “What’s the matter with him John?”

  Meecham said, “Wolfe is taking Charley Lee’s place. Why did you do that to Lee, Sam?”

  “He was your man, wasn’t he?”

  “You must have known that.”

  “Well, I didn’t want him around anymore.”

  “You didn’t have to batter him that way,” Meecham grunted. “He won’t be useful for two more weeks.”

  Wolfe said, “Don’t try that on me, Durell.”

  “I don‘t want you around, either,” Durell said.

  Meecham said, “It’s something we can‘t do anything about, Cajun. You have to take him.”

  “Only if he stays out of my sight,” Durell said.

  Wolfe said, “I won’t get in your way, but I’ll be around when you need me. Because you’re going to need me. You can count on it.” He had a deep gravelly voice and his nose had been broken more than once. So someone had put a fist to him at least one time. He went on flatly, “It’s not the job I asked for, but I’ve got my orders from Mr. Meecham, no matter what you say, and I’m not responsible to you and I don’t take any shit from you, either. You’re going to stay alive, as long as you’re in this for the General, and I’m going to see to it that you do.”