Now he could hear their breathing, a sobbing in their throats. They were like slavering hounds, determined to reach him for the kill. Durell slid down another dune, judged he was about one hundred yards inland from the beach now, and turned right, heading back for the Fort’s perimeter. If he could reach the fences, every kind of automatic alarm would go off. But the fences were too far away. They were overtaking him, they would overcome him, inevitably.
A long narrow inlet led back to the beach. He ran down it, legs pumping, splashing through cold, shallow water. They were only thirty, then twenty feet behind him.
He saw the wrecked boat, swung for it. The two men at his heels were just emerging from the sandy cut. He fired again at the nearest one. The man’s leg went out from under him and he fell, rolling over and over. He tried to rise, and fell again. He began to crawl after Durell with a single-minded, deadly purpose.
Durell jumped for the canted deck of the boat, splinters tearing at his hands. He didn’t see Wolfe. The last man jumped, too, and caught at his ankle. Durell almost toppled, got his balance aboard the ship’s planks, kicked at the pale anonymous face. The grip on his ankle did not loosen. Durell squeezed the trigger again. There was only a harmless click. His gun was empty. Desperate, he threw it into the man’s face below him. The weapon bounced off the man’s head with no effect. His ankle was being squeezed until the bones were about to break. He was being drawn inexorably downward, to fall back on the beach. Once in his pursuer’s hands, he knew he would be finished.
“Wolfe!” he yelled. “Wolfe!”
Then he was dragged down.
He landed flat on his side, spun about by the ankle as if he were an Indian club in the other’s grip. The fall knocked the breath out of him. The other man immediately swarmed over him, his moves swift and vicious, filled with power. The man in the wet suit was big and solid, alive with squirming muscles. His face was just a face.
Durell felt the unbearable squeeze of fingers on his throat. He tried to knee upward, lifted the man a few inches, then struggled sidewise. The man’s hand squeezed harder on his larynx. Durell swung at him desperately. He hit the man in the ribs, the back, tried to claw upward and push the face away from his, searching with his thumbs for the other’s eyes. He felt like a child in the grip of a maniac. The other man made no sound, offered
nothing but death. Durell got his legs up, slammed his heels into the man’s kidneys, again and again. The sky began to reel. Blood thundered in his ears.
“Who are—you?” he gasped.
There was only a grimace of bated teeth as the man struggled to crush his windpipe.
“Who—sent you?” Durell squeezed out.
The man in the wet suit lifted himself, ready for a final, smashing descent on his throat. His teeth gleamed. There was no other expression on his face. Blood dripped down from his shoulder, and Durell suddenly realized that one of his bullets had hit this man, too. By all rights, he should have been helpless, screaming in agony. It was as if the man did not feel pain.
Durell summoned his last strength, heaved, rolled to the left under the sand-embedded boat’s ribs. The other’s head slammed against the rotting timber. For a moment his grip eased on Durell’s throat and he was able to draw in a long, wheezing breath. He flailed his arm, slammed a fist into the other’s face, hit him again. More blood dripped onto him. He wondered vaguely where Wolfe could be. He tried to wriggle farther under the wrecked boat. Something hard pressed into his shoulder. It was the gun he had thrown at the man in the wet suit. He struggled to reach it, clubbed it, and struck at the man’s face. Everything was going black. The man’s strength was beyond understanding. Durell smashed the butt of the gun at the man’s head, saw the nose crush inward. He struck again, hit an eye, heard bone crack, saw the eye pop out, bloody and unnatural. Still, the man did not let him go. He had strength for only one more blow. He put all that was left in him into the short, hard swing. Then he couldn’t breathe any more. There was a roaring in his ears, a wild beating and flutter of his heart, an unbearable straining in his lungs. . . .
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 sp
ongy 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.
“Hello!” a pleasant voice called. “Looking for me?
Or just bird-watching?”
Durell had heard no one approach. Below him was the man who had driven away in the Volvo, two other men in neat gray suits, and a small, rotund, bald fellow in a shooting jacket. All four had shotguns and rifles aimed upward at Durell.
Assignment Unicorn Page 13