“Oh, yes.”
“He took the collection with him?”
“Yes, he did.”
“But he hasn’t been in touch with you? I mean, for you to write to him?"
“I thought you wanted to talk about my poor husband, Mr. Durell. Are you a numismatist, too?”
“In a most modest way.”
“I wish I could help you, but . . . ” She made an indecisive move to rise. Durell got to his feet. “I really can’t. I feel ill, just now. It’s been a strain. Everything has come down on my poor head. I don’t understand it. I feel betrayed, and that makes me feel as if I am being unkind to his memory, you see.”
A vague flutter of hands. No gesture was extensive, no expression dramatic. Medium. She was like a bowl of gelatin that quaked aimlessly at every touch.
He asked, “Did your brother ever correspond with or purchase coins from a man named Sanderson, P.I. Sanderson, perhaps of London?”
An inexpert smile. “Philip. Oh, yes. A lot of correspondence, as I remember.”
“Would you have any of those letters left?”
A stiffening. “I fail to see what connection—I am afraid I really do not understand the true purpose of your visit here, Mr. Durell, at a time like this.”
“I’ve been rude and thoughtless,” Durell said quickly. “Forgive me. I’ll go now.”
She walked with him to the door, taking steps that were neither too long nor too short. She shook hands with him. “Alex packed up all his correspondence and lab papers and took them with him when he went to London, Mr. Durell. Alex was a very neat, very tidy man. I miss him very much.”
She shook hands again. A pin was loose in her brown hair. Her eyes saw nothing of the beauty of the autumn day. No one accompanied him to the circular drive of crushed oyster shells. His car had collected some of the heat of the day’s sun. He drove quietly through the tall impressive gates and turned north toward the Potomac bridges, the Beltway, and the Memorial Parkway.
Within two minutes, he turned off abruptly, went slowly through the village, stopped in a drugstore, drove a little farther, and entered a cafe for a glass of draft beer, lingering for ten minutes. In the Chevrolet again, he went back to the main highway. By then he knew that the black Buick Riviera was following him.
He eased the S&W .38 in his belt and drove on.
30
FIVE MINUTES later he spotted a wayside picnic area and pulled in, slid out quickly, walked to the restroom building, and stood in the shadow of the brown-leafed oaks that edged a wood. The Riviera turned in smoothly after him. The Buick had tinted reflective glass on the sides and back window. Through the windshield he saw the driver, a youngish black man, in a sedate charcoal-gray suit, white shirt, black necktie. There was a man in the back seat. Durell stepped from the shadows with his gun dangling from his fingers as the man in the back got out.
It was John Meecham.
“Sam. Relax.”
Durell raised the gun and pointed it at Meecham’s stomach. He didn’t move from the shadows beside the lavatories. Two cars went by on the road, not slowing. A truck came from the other direction. It went by. Meecham’s wide mouth stretched in a froglike grin. His bulging eyes, however, betrayed a beginning anger.
“Put that thing down, Cajun.”
“Are you armed?” Durell asked.
“What is it, don’t you trust me?”
”No.”
“You don’t think Strawbridge’s suicide settles the whole thing?”
“No. Tell your man to get out of the car, too. Hands showing. No funny business.”
“Very well.” Meecham called to his chauffeur and the young black got out of the car carefully. Durell gestured with his gun toward the toilets. The building was built of concrete blocks. “In there, son. Stay out of the way.”
“Robert is okay,” Meecham said. “You are overreacting, Sam.”
“It’s safer this way. Go on, Robert.”
The driver looked at Meecham for instructions and received a nod, then went up the three steps into the restroom and closed the door when Durell ordered him to do so. Meecham sat down at one of the concrete picnic tables. Durell moved so he could cover the restroom door and the table, too. The wind blew a scurry of brown oak leaves along the autumn grass. The sun was warm. Two more cars went by on the road. They were not the same ones that had passed before.
Meecham’s rich baritone was persuasive. “Look here, Sam. Did Enoch remove you as investigating officer?”
“That doesn’t matter,” Durell said.
“You have direct orders from General McFee?”
“Yes. Are you closing the books on the unicorn matter?”
“No, I am not. As a matter of fact, I’ve been following up one of your suggestions. I’ve been to Fort Meade, consulting the NSA computer. You’re strung out too tight, Sam. Will you listen to me?”
"Why National Security?” Durell asked.
"Just for their files. Checking on the ‘innocent victims’ of each unicorn attack. Looking for a connection.
You’re the one who suggested it, Cajun.”
"I was just on my way there myself,” Durell said.
I’ll save you time and trouble.” Meecham’s thick brows scowled. He sat in the sunlight and had to squint lus bulging eyes a bit to look up at Durell’s tall figure.
‘There were attacks in Lima, in Abu Ra’shab, in one of the Arab Trucial States, in Pakuru. Perhaps others I couldn‘t find, incidents that looked like local terrorist affairs. You know about Hugh Donaldson in Palingpon; there was also a Signor Alberto Amfalso on the plane in Rome-—-he had heavy industrial interests along the Somali Coast in East Africa-—and Deputy Minister Sulaki Madragaffi in Geneva. There were undoubtedly others that the computer did not record.”
“And?” Durell asked.
“I looked for a connection, any connection at all, between these alleged innocent victims.”
“And there is one,” Durell said flatly.
“You know about it?”
“Tell me.”
Meecham took one of his long thin cigars from his breast pocket and clamped it between his square teeth. He had trouble lighting it in the wind that blew the fallen leaves around the picnic table.
“Each man, aside from being an ‘innocent victim,’ was involved in local internal security. Mostly in unstable states. Their records are clear. A ‘normal’ matter of business, supplying police forces with arms, training in tactics and weaponry, mob control, riot control, anti-coup methods that seem necessary in this world of hijacking, assassination and political violence. Police forces, Sam. Of course, each of the dead men has since been replaced. I’ve put some people to work tracing down those replacements. We don’t have anything on them as yet, except that the budgets for these special forces—some of them supplied from our own funds, such as Hugh Donaldson took care of in Palingpon—are rather heavier than they should be.”
Durell sat down across from Meecham. He put away his gun. He said, “Heavy budgets, supplied by us. Replaced officials, filling in after their superiors were removed. Is that your connection?”
“There is to be an international conference of these people to discuss security, the maintenance of internal peace and control of rebellious elements in these unstable nations. The new administrators will be in attendance.
The thing is called the International Conference of Security Officials for Police Protection. ICSOPP. Ever hear of it?”
“McFee mentioned it in passing,” Durell said. “I don’t really know much about it.”
“You won’t. Not in the media anyway. Not much more in the papers than you could read about the way we train foreign troops here in America—or used to train them until the media blew the whistle. Since then all word has been shut down, in case you haven’t noticed.”
“When does this conference come off?”
“In two weeks. On Mattatuck Island,” Meecham said.
Durell’s dark-blue eyes were thoughtful. “T
hat gives us some time. And will you attend, sir?”
“Yes, I will be there. So will General McFee. And, incidentally, so will the President, who is curious.”
Durell stood up, aware of Meecham’s froglike face looking at him. When he heard the sudden rush of feet behind him, it was almost too late. He half turned, glimpsed Robert, the chauffeur, coming at a dead run with a gun in his hand. Meecham stood up and said, “Don’t, Robert,” but it came after the black man had already hit Durell on the back of the head with the barrel of the gun. Durell went down on one knee, an arm outstretched to break his fall. The sunlight wavered and darkened. He turned, caught Robert’s ankle, yanked him down. Robert, sprawled on his back, tried to lash out and kick him in the ribs. Durell came around and snapped the man’s gun away and smashed an elbow into Robert’s throat. Robert gagged and choked. Meecham said quietly, “Cajun. Never mind. It’s an honest error. Robert thinks you lack discipline.”
Durell let the chauffeur go. The man rolled over, vomiting. Durell himself felt as if his head had been torn off. It was hard to breathe. Leaves crunched with brittle sounds as Meecham walked around the table toward him.
“Don’t come near me, Meecham,” Durell said.
“I won’t. I want to help Robert.”
“Go ahead.”
He smelled Meecham’s cigar smoke and it stuck in his throat, gagging him.
31
THE COTTAGE at the Fort was empty.
Durell stood in the doorway, listening to the surf. It had taken six hours to drive back to the Eastern Shore. His head still ached. He had forced himself to drive with slow care. None of the guards challenged his entry into the Fort area. Nobody seemed interested in him anymore. And then he walked to the cottage, anticipating Maggie, and the place was empty.
Wolfe was gone, too.
He checked the bedroom, saw the rumpled sheets, saw that her clothes were gone. He considered descending the large hatchway in the kitchen to the netherworld of ISB headquarters, but he did not think Maggie would go down there. He stepped outside again. The lighthouse was to his left. He turned right and walked down to the hard-packed sand at the water’s edge. The dim starlight showed him Maggie’s bare footprints proceeding into the water. He lifted his head, startled, and stared at the black Atlantic. It seemed to him suddenly that there was nothing out in that empty darkness but death.
Then he saw the footprints emerging from the sea and let out a long breath and walked that way, a sudden urgency in him. When he reached the second set of prints, he saw that a man had joined her or followed her, wearing shoes. He thought of Wolfe, and quickened his pursuit.
A point of higher land thrust into the sea, south of the lighthouse and the innocuous—looking cluster of false cottages. On the landward side, the perimeter was amply guarded by the detection devices and fences and patrolling guards. Seaward, submerged beneath the low-tide line, were more barriers, ready to rip the bottom out of any approaching boat. An underwater swimmer who attempted to cut the wires in the barrier would set off other alarms. The seaward perimeter extended more than half a mile. Toward the point, a single cottage that looked ready to collapse in the next high wind off the Atlantic contained a sentinel, alert and armed, with a radar scope that covered the surface of the sea in unending sweeps.
Durell lost the footprints a short distance from the sentinel’s cottage. They turned inland, but in the starlight he saw that the man’s heavy shoes partly obliterated the traces of the girl’s bare feet. Wolfe—or whoever it was—had been following Maggie, not walking beside her. Durell turned inland, too, climbed a low dune, crouched in the tall sea grass and looked over the crest of the southern point of land. Beyond was public territory, although no houses had been built along the shore here, and the nearest road to the beach was more than five miles away. Developers and builders had been subtly discouraged from purchasing oceanfront tracts along here. The beach looked primitive, untouched by vacationers.
He could not see Maggie or Wolfe.
A sense of deep unease began to trouble him.
He saw the skeletal remains of an old wreck, a fishing boat that had been driven ashore in a storm long ago. Little remained of the vessel except the stem and ribs, half buried in a wash of sand rippled by the tide. Beyond the perimeter wire, the surf seemed stronger, torn by rip tides and currents produced by the thrust of land into the sea. Part of the fence had been undermined along the bottom of a high dune, and a hollow existed under it, wet sand glistening in starshine.
Durell approached the fence, thinking of heat sensors and electronic beams. He lay fiat, studied the sand in the dim light, and saw that it had been scuffed by crawling bodies. Maggie had escaped through here. Wolfe had followed. He could see their footsteps descending the dunes.
In less than a minute, he went under and beyond the fence. He crouched low and followed the footprints. They headed directly for the old wreck.
He halted, crouching in the sand at the base of the dune. Clouds moved in from the east, and the starlight was dimmer. The sand felt cold under his fingers.
He saw her when he passed the skeletal wreck of the fishing boat. She sat with Wolfe, side by side, facing the sea. Wolfe’s heavy head was tilted toward her, listening as she talked in a low undertone that was washed away by the surf. Durell expelled a long, silent breath. His worry vanished. Then he saw the girl jump suddenly to her feet, Wolfe springing to his feet beside her.
And then he saw something else.
They were coming out of the sea, two, three, then four of them. Dark figures, eerie and unnatural, like oceanic beasts invading the dry land. They moved fast, loosening flippers, goggles, facemasks and tanks, emerging on the other side of the wreck.
Their silence was unnatural.
Maggie shouted to Wolfe, her words torn away by the wind and the overriding sound of the surf.
“Maggie!” Durell shouted.
He started to run down from the higher dunes. Wolfe turned his head, crouching. The girl stared, the back of her hand to her mouth.
The four men in their wet suits came up to the level of the rotting timbers at the boat’s stern. Their heads turned this way and that.
“Maggie!” Durell yelled again.
Wolfe saw the black figures now. He swung his head one way and then another, seeking a way out. He pushed the girl toward Durell, turned, moved toward the shelter of the wreck. His gun reflected starlight in his hand.
Maggie stumbled and went down. She picked herself up, came up the beach from the ocean toward Durell’s higher position. Wolfe yelled something that Durell couldn’t hear above the rumble of the surf.
There was familiarity in the way the black-suited men moved, a precision and speed that was awesome. Durell started down toward the running girl and saw he couldn’t make it. He heard the heavy rap of Wolfe’s gun, but none of the quartet from the sea stumbled or checked himself.
They came around the wreck, two of them clambering over the moldering ribs of the fishing boat, leaping agilely from timber to timber. Maggie halted, undecided. Durell saw one of the black suits lined against the starlight on the bow of the wreck and took careful aim, holding his gun in both hands as he squeezed the trigger. The shot seemed thunderous. The man on the bow dropped, dove for the sand, rolled over, and came up again.
They ran for Durell.
Durell checked himself.
They weren’t after Maggie. They ignored Wolfe.
They were coming for him.
He fired again and again. He was cut off from retreat along the beach. Behind him there was only a field of wild dunes, a jungle of marsh grass, and stagnant saltwater pools. He saw Maggie running for him, awkward, hips swaying as she struggled for speed in the yielding beach sand. He caught her arm and pulled her up on the dune.
“Sam? Wolfe—”
“Come on.”
“You can‘t leave Wolfe—”
“They’re not interested in him.”
The black suits were about a hundred fee
t away now. Wolfe was in the deep shadow under the ribs of the stranded boat. Durell heard him fire again and saw one of the swimmers jerk around and turn back to the shadows, as if impatient with an annoying gnat. The other three charged up the beach toward him and the girl.
“Run,” Durell gasped.
He pulled Maggie’s arm and half dragged her over the crest of the dune, then slipped and stumbled downward, splashed through a muddy slough of salt water, climbed the next dune, heading inland. The three pursuers came up the slope as if it were level. Durell turned and fired again. This time one of the men threw up his hands and fell. He did not get up again. His two companions didn’t give him a glance. Their legs pumped doggedly, their forms came closer.
Durell ran along the bottom of the gully between the next two dunes. Maggie’s breath began to whistle. She stumbled, fell, picked herself up again. Durell yanked her forward. She gasped a protest, her knees buckling. There was something irresistible about their pursuit. He thought he heard Wolfe’s yell distantly behind him at the shore, but he could not turn back. He heard the thud of feet coming up at the rear, and suddenly he knew he could not outrun these men no matter how hard he tried, no matter how fast he could force his legs to pump. He saw an opening at the end of the dune, turned left into it, climbed a grass-grown slope, glimpsed water below, turned his head, and saw that his pursuers had closed the distance by half.
He shoved Maggie aside. “Stay here. Stay down.”
“No! Don’t let them get me—”
“They’re after me,” he said. “Do as I say.”
His throat burned with each breath drawn by his laboring lungs. He threw the girl aside, saw her roll down the incline toward the shallow saltwater pond. Turning, he ran back up the dune toward the tiny pass. The two black suits swerved behind him. They halted, looked down for the girl, looked up for him. Durell shot twice, one for each of them.
One of the pursuers jerked about, fell, crawled up again. The man’s arm looked useless, but he resumed climbing up to where Durell stood. Durell turned and ran again, away from where he had left Maggie, drawing these two after him. He knew now that he had killed one on the beach. Maybe Wolfe had taken care of another at the water’s edge, too. That left just this pair, relentlessly overtaking him.
Assignment Unicorn Page 12