Assignment - Quayle Question Read online

  On the following Sunday, Señor Roberto Ucuman was released unharmed on a remote mountain airstrip and the police returned him to his wife and six eager children.

  The industrialist could give no description of the terrorists, nor could he describe the places to which he had been taken during his captivity. No ransom had been demanded. No ransom was paid.

  Señor Ucuman insisted the affair was a tragic mistake.

  On the 22nd of that month, the transfer of controlling stock in L’Assuncion and all the other minor newspaper chains was effected by a sale of seventy-two percent of outstanding issues to I. Shumata & Company, a Japanese zaibatsu or trading company.

  It was discovered later, but considered to have no connection, that the youngest son of Ucuman, Rudolfo, the apple of his father’s eye, had encountered an unhappy accident three hours after his father’s return, and was killed in a fall on one of the mountain paths near the ski lodge.

  On the 22nd of the same month, Herr Ignatius Klocke, chairman of the board of a West German steel firm, was reported missing for twenty-two hours while in Zurich to meet representatives of the Union Bank of Switzerland to discuss rising commodity prices. Herr Klocke was an authoritative, arbitrary industrialist who brooked no opposition to the expansion of his firm, which included an interlock with the American company, D.F. Agro-Chemicals, a heavy soybean exporter, and the Hamburg import firm of U.T.B. Weksteen, which owned, among other industrials, a network of sorghum farms in Australia. A minor holding of Herr Ignatius Klocke was the Bamberger Zeitung and its affiliated network of small television and radio stations scattered through West Germany.

  Herr Klöcke, who was a bachelor with no known relatives, was found floating in Lake Zurich the next day.

  The Klöcke firm did not falter in its operations because of Klocke’s death, which Swiss police authorities described as a suicide, with no known motives. Two weeks later, the next in command, a dedicated industrial executive named Herr Walther Grubner, authorized the sale of the Bamberger Zeitung and its media affiliates to a French combine, which in turn yielded its majority stock holdings to the I. Shumata zaibatsu of Japan.

  M. L. Swannson, of Stockholm, Sweden, corporate manager of the Tannborg Pulp & Paper Co., with interests in Canada’s Alberta province and affiliated through minor subsidiaries to various lumbering and electronic-manufacturing companies in Scandinavia, sold his interest in his chain of smalltown newspapers in Norway and Denmark, one day after his actress-wife was badly disfigured in an auto accident some fifty kilometers north of Stockholm.

  The buyers were a small conglomerate of Italian tractor manufacturers. Among their commercial interests was a strong tie to the trading company known as I. Shumata of Tokyo.

  Maurice K. Tang, chairman of the Hong Kong Sulu Sea Electronic Manufacturing Co., Ltd, was kidnapped, presumably by Communists from the mainland, and dropped out of sight. Mr. Tang’s interests included banking affiliates throughout Southeast Asia and spread as far as the Banco Popacario SA of San Gionanna Mula of Honduras. The Banco Popacario owned a chain of small newspapers scattered throughout Central America, as well as a number of minor radio stations in that part of the world. After Maurice K. Tang’s disappearance, the Banco Popacario divested itself of its media interests to C.P. Dillers, Ltd, a chain of housing developers in Great Britain. Dillers was majority-owned by the I. Shumata zaibatsu.

  “Had enough?” McFee asked.

  File Kappa 2375/GB AS Dept, was fat and heavy. Durell had put it down on General McFee’s desk and watched Deirdre finish leafing through her copy.

  Durell said, “Who is this collator, A. Mitstein, who wrote these comments?”

  “He works with Magda 1001, our computer down in the basement.”

  “How did he stumble on I. Shumata’s activities?”

  “His uncle’s shoe store. It was a forced sale, and Alfred wondered about it. The shoe store was taken over by an Italian firm, Falba Shoes, based in Torino. Mostly manufacturing for export to the U.S. Alfred’s uncle was squeezed by his local bank in Alexandria, received a good offer to bail him out by Falba, and accepted, retired to Miami Beach. Alfred had lived with his uncle and resented having to find quarters for himself. Magda 1001 is his baby. He traced Falba Shoes to an Austrian firm in Vienna, T.P.D. Inc., and from there to the Freilich Bank in Luxembourg, which owns mortgages and investment loans of T.P.D.’s. Freilich Bank is financed out of Lebanon, Saudi oil money. But T.P.D. was originally set up as a subsidiary of the Schilling Furniture people, who have interests in Montreal and Ottawa, as well as the Fukui Tomura Bank in Nagasaki. It’s the way the world works, Samuel. Behind Tomura is I. Shumata and Japanese and Korean media enterprises.”

  McFee paused. “None of the major world radio, TV, or newspaper chains are affected. But you see the relationship, of course. Buried in shipping, banking, food-processing, electronics, you-name-it, are hundreds and hundreds of outlets for the formation, shaping, and influence of public opinion. We wonder why. Every one of the outfits was taken over by violence. Sometimes overt, sometimes quite well-hidden.

  “Albert couldn’t get Magda 1001 to go beyond the zaibatsu in Japan. We’re at a dead end.”

  Durell said, “And?”

  “There is method in this apparent web of commercial coincidence, Samuel. Governments rise and fall, go to war or make peace, frame inhibiting trade policies or form alliances, based mainly on strong public opinion. The opinion of the small-town masses, Samuel. Deirdre?”

  “Yes, sir,” she said quietly.

  “Do you see why you are involved?”

  “No. Not yet.”

  “You are related to Rufus Quayle, are you not?” McFee asked softly.

  “I’m his niece. It doesn’t mean anything. I saw him only once, when I was a child. He is not a man who cares for poor relations.”

  “Aside from his daughter Deborah, you are his only other living blood relation, are you not?”

  Durell sat back, a sudden unease in him. He looked at Deirdre as if he had never seen her before. He watched her nod slowly. She did not glance at him.

  Durell said, “Sir?”

  “Yes, Samuel.”

  “Are you talking about the Rufus Quayle?”

  “Yes. The man who created a myth out of himself in his own lifetime. The billionaire several times over. The recluse, the mysterious figure who owns, wholly and completely, banks, shipping fleets, oil interests, and the Quayle system of radio and TV stations, and, of course, the famous—or infamous—network of small dailies and weeklies that cover this country like a blanket, flooding the population with his personal editorials which, while strange and off-beat, nevertheless have defeated senators, voted in congressmen, interfered with various government bureaus and agencies, effected new policies and directions, caused a reshuffling of our lower courts, and in general represents the greatest lobbying industry in the U.S. A patriot, but not a crackpot, Samuel. His efforts have been all to the good. But he is too powerful a man. If his empire should fall, let us say, to I. Shumata zaibatsu, we don’t know how the editorial policies of his media chain might change. Or what directions he might urge the American people into taking. It would be effective. I could prove this to you, Samuel, with data and readouts from Madga 1001’s computer efforts, but you may take my word for it.”

  Durell looked again at Deirdre. “Rufus Quayle is really your uncle, Dee?”

  “Yes.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “I didn’t know the General knew it, either. I’m not particularly impressed by it. It’s a connection that does not really exist in my life.”

  Durell looked at McFee with anger tinged by respect. “You knew this when you hired Dee for K Section?”

  “Of course, Samuel.”

  “And you want her on this assignment because she might be personally involved?”

  McFee nodded. “Under the circumstances, I thought you might prefer to work with her.”

  “Under what circumstances?”

/>   “Rufus Quayle has disappeared. Permanently this time, it seems. Last week in New York, the general manager of his Q.P.I. also vanished. He flew from Zurich to Manhattan to meet his estranged wife, Deborah Quayle—your cousin, Deirdre, Quayle’s only child—and they both vanished. Deborah Quayle’s apartment was ransacked in the process. There are no clues. Nothing to identify the kidnappers or tell what they wanted. No ransom notes. No publicity. It was a hard, clean, very professional job. We have tried to contact Rufus Quayle. No success. And while Deirdre disclaims any emotional tie between her uncle and herself, she may yet be another target.”

  “You think the I. Shumata organization is now trying to pick up Q.P.I. to add to their other strings of worldwide media chains?”

  “Most likely,” McFee said. He picked up his blackthorn stick and waggled it at Durell. It made Durell distinctly uneasy to have that multiple weapon pointed at him. “Coincidentally with Deborah Quayle’s vanishment, and her estranged husband’s, we picked up word that a man answering to Kokui Tomash’ta’s description showed up in New York and was seen in the Park Avenue apartment building the day before the kidnapping. Tomash’ta works for Eli Plowman, who has turned into a rogue agent. We want Plowman. We can’t afford to have him and his killer crew turned loose against Quayle. Do you follow?”

  Plowman was no mean adversary. The man was dedicated to ruthless assassinations. He had operated almost independently of K Section for years, mainly in Southeast Asia, and his resources were private and mostly unknown. It was not the first time an agent turned rogue and went independent, to sell data commodities for personal gain. It was not a question of going over the wire to work for the other side. In a sense, Plowman’s defection was worse. There were few files, fewer dossiers, with which to work on him. He could vanish at will, do as he chose, work wherever and for whomever he wished.

  Durell flicked more pages of the file McFee had handed him. Every job was professional, every incident of extra violence seemed gratuitous. Most of his victims could have been spared. But that would not be Plowman’s m.o. Eli had been a “sanitation man” too long to change.

  He felt chagrined that he had not known the item about Deirdre’s relationship to Rufus Quayle. He thought, with anger at himself, that where McFee had dug out everything about her before taking her into K Section, he himself had allowed affection and love to blind him.

  Rufus Quayle had indeed made himself a myth in his own time. His monthly editorials in his TV, radio, and newspaper media were devastating, down-to-earth, harsh, and uncompromising. He was a legend. His gravelly voice, taped for broadcast but without his image permitted for viewing by the public, was almost a trademark. He advocated a strict Federalism, a return to the virtues of an earlier America that seemed lost forever in this technological age. His psychology was marked by a haunting nostalgia for the past century, a nation illustrated by Currier & Ives, in which self-reliance, home rule, Bible precepts were the rules by which Americans should live. “Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without,” he insisted.

  Quayle’s enemies insisted that the man, one of the world’s wealthiest, could hardly five according to these simple virtues. They pointed to the incredible mansion he had built in the salt marshes of the South Jersey coast, set amid hundreds of acres of inlets, tidewater swamps, sand dimes, and islands. Quayle’s personal taste in earlier years had run to a kind of Venetian Gothic. Amid the channels and tidal flats of the shore, he had built a vulgar imitation of a Venetian palazzo, which he called Ca’d’Orizon. No one knew why. It was rumored that he had a priceless art collection there for his private edification, an army of retainers and guards, and a harem of gorgeous women to appease his appetites.

  Rufus Quayle was never seen there. Indeed, he was never seen at any of the penthouse apartments and villas he kept in London, Rio, Hong Kong, Johannesburg, or Beirut. He had a house in Bermuda, another in California. In view of his refusal to appear publicly, it was rumored that no such man really existed. That he was, indeed, only a myth. That he had died years ago and that Q.P.I., as a robot organization, kept going of its own momentum. Quayle never appeared to refute such rumors. But his editorials and his angry, pervasive voice continued to be heard—until two months ago.

  Quayle’s right-hand man, Martin Pentecost, who had married Quayle’s daughter, denied regularly that Quayle was ill, dead, or insane. On the other hand, he had offered no explanation for the cessation of Quayle’s editorials. Q.P.I. rolled on, in all its intricate corporate devices.

  Now Martin Pentecost had vanished, too.

  And his wife, who was Quayle’s daughter.

  And Q.P.I. was threatened by a shadow zaibatsu, a vast mercantile corporation that had devoured, by threat, coercion, and violence, a number of similar media chains all over the world.

  The dagger point of the movement was one Kokui Tomash’ta, the Red Lotus assassin. And Tomash’ta worked for Eh Plowman, a renegade from K Section.

  Durell said, “It’s too big for Plowman, sir. I don’t believe he could handle it. He’s very good at specifics, but to tackle a conspiracy of this size is just too complicated for him. What do we really know about this I. Shumata outfit?”

  “The Japanese government is usually clannish about protecting the zaibatsu. They include the Mitsubishi, the Mitsui, and any number of other trading corporations. I. Shumata does exist, but as far as we can determine, it is all a paper tiger.”

  Durell watched McFee tap on the desk with his walking stick. McFee said, “However, we have a place for you to start. A Mr. Yoshi Akuro, his wife, and three children, are in the States. Mr. Akuro is the nominal head of the I. Shumata Company.”

  “Hell,” Durell said. “Where?”

  McFee tapped the desk again. “He was in San Francisco to start with. It should be noted that Yoshi Akuro has only recently inherited the I. Shumata zaibatsu. Shumata himself was killed in an auto accident near Kobe two weeks ago.”

  “A legitimate accident?” Durell asked.

  “As far as we can tell. A trick of fate, perhaps. Akuro inherited control of the Shumata outfit—which, by the way, began last year as a very minor trading corporation with few assets and financing borrowed at usurious rates. Everything that happened to I. Shumata enterprises happened within the past six months.”

  “Why did Yoshi Akuro and his family come here?”

  “We don’t know. We think he meant to ask us for help. We think he innocently inherited the mantle of control of I. Shumata, discovered its enormous and peculiar aggrandizement, dug into it, and refused to operate as a simple figurehead. Maybe he’s a man of honor. If so, he represents a crack in the enemy’s armor, Samuel. He asked for police protection as soon as he arrived with his family at San Francisco.”

  “Then we give it to him, of course.”

  “Akuro changed his mind. Maybe he was finally terrorized by whoever is really behind the zaibatsu. He suddenly rejected police help and flew to New York, where he conducted some routine business and then, yesterday, flew by private plane to White Springs Spa in Virginia. Do you know the place?”

  “Playground of ailing millionaires,” Durell said. “Remote and exclusive. We tried to get in. We were refused. We tried to put agents in as guests. They were kicked out. Yoshi Akuro wants no part of us now. He’s hiding there. We want him, just to talk to, to shake him down—privately, with no chance for him to complain publicly. Also, we’d like to save his life.”

  “From Tomash’ta?”

  “After Martin Pentecost and Deborah Quayle disappeared, Tomash’ta showed up en route to White Springs Spa. He made the mistake of applying for passage on the resort’s own airline. Turned down, of course. He purchased a blue Porsche this morning and is on his way by car.”

  “Alone?”

  “So it seems.”

  Durell was silent.

  McFee said, “It’s all laid out for you. You and Deirdre 'have thirty minutes to meet your crew and get going.”

  On the way to meet Marcus and He
nley, Deirdre said softly, “Does it matter, Sam?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “So what if Rufus Quayle is my uncle? It’s nothing to me. I told you, I only saw him once, as a child.”

  “You could become an enormously rich woman, Dee.”

  “Not likely.” She smiled, touched his arm, kissed him. She smelled good. “You’re annoyed because you never dug into my background like McFee did. Would it really make any difference, if by some fluke I inherited Q.P.I.?” She hugged his arm tighter. “After all this time we’ve had?”

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  “You’d never lose me, Sam. Never, never.”

  Chapter Five

  Durell's urgency did not override his usual caution. Twenty feet from the screened veranda of Yoshi Akuro’s cottage at White Spring Spa, he checked Marcus’s plunge for the doorway with an outstretched arm.

  “Wait.”

  “What for? If your girl is in there, or something’s happened inside—” Marcus’s broad face in the shadowed shrubbery was impatient. “The place is all dark—”

  “But the fireplace is going,” Durell said.

  “Maybe they went to the main house for dinner.”

  “Akuro has his own cook, I’d guess. Or he prepares his own meals for himself and his family. Look at the trays on the porch. Waiting to be picked up.”

  A wheeled serving cart loaded with china and dim white teapots stood outside the closed door. No lights shone from the windows. The brook nearby made a cold tinkling sound in the chill evening air. The wind was stronger, moving the high branches of a sycamore tree.

  He wished he knew what had happened to Deirdre. A quick spasm of fear for her coiled in his stomach. He put it aside, concentrated on the immediate problem. He respected Kokui Tomash’ta’s deadly capacities. He knew Eli Plowman even better, and in any contact with Plowman, caution was the keynote to survival.