Read Online Assignment - Quayle Question by Edward S. Aarons - Free Book Online Page A

iron control over herself. Like that time the jetliner crashed at the end of the runway in Boston, and all the passengers panicked, clawing at each other to get out. She had remained calm, keeping seated as the safest thing to do in the face of the mindless savagery of what had been a peaceful, civilized planeload of human beings.
    But this attack was different.
    Perhaps it was the silence with which they worked. There were three of them, wearing stocking masks, and they looked unnatural, faceless entities whose whole beings were absorbed in what they had to do. The apartment was on the fourteenth floor, a quiet and old-fashioned place in the Sixties, high above the noise of traffic and the city’s usual congestion. They were ruthless about everything, slamming her backward against the wall with a jolt that knocked the breath out of her. All without warning, without the slightest hint of what was to come when she innocently opened the door.
    The tallest and heaviest one kept her pinned to the wall, her wrists gripped with iron strength that held in it the tremors of incipient violence. The others, both of medium height, although one was shorter than the other and all but danced as he moved, like a ballet performer on his toes, ravaged the apartment with a speed and thoroughness she could not believe. She turned her head to watch them move from the service door, down the hall into the living room. Soft crashing sounds echoed the destruction of the Italian Renaissance furniture. There were quick ripping sounds, soft padding noises, several thuds and bumps she could not understand. Her breath stopped in her throat.
    When they came back, one said, “Not here.”
    The voice was just a voice. It meant nothing.
    “Lady?”
    “Yes.”
    “You’re Deborah Quayle?”
    “Yes.”
    “Where is your husband?”
    “I have no husband.”
    “Don’t get funny. You know this is serious. Where is Martin Pentecost?”
    “He’s gone.”
    “And the papers he brought?”
    “He—he didn’t bring anything.”
    She was appalled at the terror that shook in her voice, like a latent scream out of a dark and primeval jungle. The three men wore ordinary suits, dark, neat, expensive. White shirts. Polished shoes. Clean hands and fingernails. One of them smelled of expensive French cologne. She thought that was an error, the only identifiable thing about any of the three.
    “When is he due back?”
    She looked from side to side. Her wrists hurt where they were pinned high above her head by the man who pressed her to the wall. She knew better than to try to knee him as he crushed her backward.
    “What?” she asked.
    She could feel their silent eyes watching her, gleaming, behind the nylon of their stocking masks. She knew what their question was. They weren’t going to ask her twice. Terror that defied all her previous concepts of intelligent and calculating behavior moved in her like a tropical storm.
    “I don’t know when Martin is coming back.”
    “He’s due at eight, isn’t he?”
    “If you say so. Look, if you want money, jewels—” None of them laughed.
    She was told, “We want you to say when.”
    “Yes. Martin is due at eight o’clock.”
    “We’re on time,” one of them said. “He’s always prompt. We’ll wait the five minutes.”
    Her apartment became a strange place, like an alien land. The smallest of the trio, the one who moved like a dancer, gave her a small mocking bow from the hips. An Oriental gesture. But he did not speak, so she couldn’t tell. The five minutes became an eternity. She had agreed to meet Martin here at eight o’cock. Whatever it was that had so troubled him back in Switzerland had intensified, to judge by the urgency in his voice when she spoke to him on the phone.
    “No stripping for me this time, Debbie,” he had told her. “No tricks. It’s a matter of life and death.”
    “Oh, Martin.” She had discounted his melodrama. “I’m sorry about last time in Zermatt. It was stupid of