Assignment - Quayle Question Read Online Free PDF

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