Free Assignment - Quayle Question by Edward S. Aarons Page B

sense.”
    “But you don’t have him here?”
    “We do. In a sense. Where is Rufus Quayle?”
    “I told you—”
    “Very well.”
                                  ****************************************
    They took off her blindfold. For the first time in many hours, she saw light again. Dimly at first, as if it came through hundreds of thin, gauzy curtains. One by one, the curtains lifted. She blinked her eyes, trying to clear her vision.
    It was as if she were in a motionless plane, high above a darkening desert. Mountains loomed in the far distance, purple with the shadows of evening. Far below, the flat vista stretched without meaning, empty and desolate, dotted here and there with scrub growth, ravaged by canyons and buttes, by grotesque and beautiful rock formations of reds and grays and glittering quartz.
    She realized she was looking through a wide, panoramic window.
    “You may turn around.”
    “I can’t.”
    “Tomash’ta?”
    It was the first name she had heard spoken among them. She felt herself turned in the chair on which she was seated. They had tied her to the chair, arms and legs, so she could not rise up out of it or move in any way. The chair was turned.
    She saw her inquisitor.
    She felt again the impact of a sense of unreality, of mental denial. Gross, enormous weight, fat, breathing with that faint hint of asthmatic difficulty. A face whose' detailed features escaped her amid a wave of malignancy, of evil, that emanated from the seated figure.
    “You find me repellent, my dear young woman?”
    “Yes.”
    “I am the Messenger. I signify all the wickedness to which this world has been abandoned.”
    “You’re still talking nonsense.”
    “We shall see. You asked about Martin? I told you, my patience is not limited. Look at Martin. Turn her some more, Tomash’ta.”
    The chair was turned, lifted bodily, set down quietly at a new angle. She saw the room, a simple plastered chamber, with a Spanish archway at one end, another arch becoming visible as she was turned about. There were heavy old beams in the ceiling. Hooks had been hung from them on iron chains.
    Something hung from one of the hooks.
    It was a naked male body, almost unidentifiable from the carcasses of steers she had once seen in a slaughterhouse.
    The man had been mutilated and tortured. With knives and with fire. She began to vomit. The big iron hook had been inserted into the jaw of the head, and the body was suspended that way from the iron hook.
    Slowly, through spasms of retching, she looked into the face of the dead man.
    Looked into the glazed, insane eyes of the dead man.
    It was Martin.

Part Three
CA’D’ORIZON

Chapter Seven
    It was cold and wet in Washington. When they landed at National Airport at two o’clock in the morning, the stars had been out and there was a balmy feel to the pre-dawn air, promising some Indian summer weather. But during the taxi ride from the airport, the wind shifted to the east and freshened, and a faint drizzle began when Durell and Deirdre arrived at his bachelor apartment near Rock Creek Park. It was a place he had stubbornly kept as a home base, even with the deterioration of the neighborhood.
    The K Section plane at the airstrip near White Spring Spa had taken them all quickly out of the mountain area. Durell sent Franklin to be hospitalized with a chipped ankle bone. Marcus and Henley were told to stand by at Annapolis Street, turning in at the dormitory there on the third floor. Durell had given Henley a verbal report for General McFee.
    Marcus was doubtful. “Aren’t you coming with us?”
    “Not yet. Perhaps later.”
    Henley coughed and poked his glasses up on his aristocratic nose and looked meaningfully at Deirdre. “Let it go, Marcus. Durell is the boss. Ours not to reason why, eh?”
    Marcus grumbled, “I’ve got reports of my own to make out for the DIA.”
    “Then make them,” Durell said briefly. “You’ll hear from me later.”
    “Cajun.”