Sunday, December 8, 2024
Saturday, December 7, 2024
Friday, December 6, 2024
Thursday, December 5, 2024
Wednesday, December 4, 2024
The Man from U.N.C.L.E.: THE BRAINWASH AFFAIR by Harry Whittington (1966)
THE BRAINWASH AFFAIR
PART ONE—INCIDENT OF THE FRIGHTENED MAN
NAPOLEON SOLO swung
down from the Orient Express, strolled across the station concourse to the
street exit, and exposed himself to incredible perils by entering a Parisian
taxi.
"Orly
Airport," Solo said and sank back in the cab as it hacked and barked its
way through the traffic.
Returning alone to
Manhattan from a Middle East assignment, he was tired and still shaken from a
close brush with death.
Trying to escape
disturbing thoughts, he watched early evening strollers, diners at street
cafes, the maniacal charges of other cabs. It wasn't that easy. He thought
about his apartment, the luxuries he was infrequently at home to enjoy, but
mostly his mind darted back to his fellow agent who'd been killed three days
ago in the street at Istanbul.
Death had struck
only inches from him; it could have as easily been he and not his partner.
Battered by this sudden impact of his own expendability, he wondered how long
before death closed in those few inches?
He glimpsed in a
window the reflected faint tightening about his lips. Fatigue, that was all. A
plan trip west across the Atlantic, a hot-cold shower, a Scotch on the rocks,
twelve hours unbroken sack time and he'd recover.
In the babbling
confusion at Orly Airport, his sense of isolation increased. Then abruptly he
caught sight of a familiar lace and he shoved through a knot of chattering
tourists, smiling warmly and expectantly.
"Lester!"
Solo called. "Lester Caillou!"
Hurrying toward a
door marked Sortie, Caillou broke stride. His
shoulders hunched as if against a blow. He glanced tensely over his shoulder.
Solo paused a few
feet from Caillou. People brushed past them on both sides. When Caillou turned,
Solo saw panic graying the slender man's dark face. Solo had seen the same look
in eyes of trapped animals.
Caillou's gaze raked
across Solo, paused the fraction of a second that betrayed that Caillou had
recognized him. Solo was alerted by training and experience to instant
reactions to facial expressions, even to lack of expression.
Caillou winced and
jerked his head around. His knuckles whitened on his attaché case. He hurried
toward the exit.
They were old
friends. Solo angled across the distance between them, intercepting Caillou at
the glass doors. In-drafts struck them as the doors parted.
"Pardon, Monsieur, what hour is it?" Solo spoke in
French, extending his wrist watch, a Swiss calendar-clock which Caillou had
presented, as identical gifts of gratitude, to him and to Illya Kuryakin.
An affair of Arabian
oil and reconstruction money from Caillou's Paris-based bank, a
misunderstanding, got Caillou before a Turk firing squad. Solo and Kuryakin had
pulled him out of it. Swearing eternal allegiance, Caillou wanted them to
remember him as warmly and had believed the thousand dollar watches would keep
him in their memories.
"No. No."
Caillou shook his head now, refusing even to glance toward the golden watch on
Solo's wrist.
Caillou's stricken
gaze leaped past Solo, scurrying across faces and forms as if he found this
brilliantly illumined lobby a pit of unspeakable terrors.
Solo had seen
frightened men before, but never one who wore his terror as openly as did
Caillou. He was pushed beyond hiding it.
"Lester, don't
you remember me?" Solo persisted, because this didn't make sense.
An ordinary man
might be frightened, hurrying toward the haven of a plane, but Caillou was not
ordinary. Solo remembered Caillou had faced Turk marksmen without flinching,
and two hours later drank raki with him and Illya,
laughing, glowing with the exultation of being alive.
"No. No. There
is some mistake. If you please." Caillou shook his head again. Pallor
underscored the rigidity of his high cheekbones.
Before Solo could
speak or lose the warmth of his smiling and the far-out memories of that
drinking session, Caillou pushed around him and thrust through the exit doors.
Involuntarily, Solo
followed him through the electronically operated doorway.
In the chilled wind
off the field, Solo stared after Caillou.
On the concrete
runway, Caillou paused for one final surreptitious glance over his shoulder,
then ran toward a waiting charter plane.
Solo exhaled
heavily, considering wryly the expendability of life-long gratitudes, then
discarding the thought. He knew he'd just witnessed a desperate man being towed
into a vortex of agony beyond his depth.
Sighing, Solo turned
back, then paused, hardly knowing why he did.
Something caught his
eye. From the underbelly of a plane near the one toward which Caillou ran in
the darkness, a freight elevator lowered, containing only a small single-seat
car.
The car was bright
red, smaller than any compact Solo had seen before. Oddly formed, it was round
in front, tapered in the rear.
Solo saw no driver
until the elevator touched the concrete. At this moment the car's engine flared
to life.
Solo then saw a man
crouched behind the wheel. Surprisingly brilliant headlamps burst yellowly to
life. The little car roared off the lift, racing toward Lester Caillou.
Solo yelled
involuntarily.
Instinctively his
hand thrust under his jacket, drawing the U.N. C.L.E. .38 caliber Special. He
went running forward, seeing he was too far away to aid Caillou.
Caillou stopped
running and turned in the glare of the head lights, his face wild with horror.
He was illumined
there a moment as if pinned against an insurmountable wall of night.
Hood-mounted guns
fired suddenly. Screaming, Caillou threw himself face down on the concrete, as
if trying to dig himself a fox hole.
Solo ran out on the
concrete. He fired twice as the small deadly car bore down on Caillou. Caillou
was like a frantic insect scrambling on hands and knees toward the plane
ladder.
Solo's bullets
slapped across the gleaming metal, inches from the driver's head. He swerved a
moment; then a plastic bubble bloomed, covering him effectively.
But in that brief
instant, Caillou was able to squeeze his way in behind the metal ladder. He
hugged himself against it.
Seeing he could not
hope to penetrate the plastic cowl covering the driver, Solo fired toward its oversized
tires, seeing for the first time that it moved on a tricycle set.
The car roared past
the ladder, going under the spreading wings of the 727.
Solo ran forward,
firing. As the car raced, a pole of light-weight metal sprang upward from the
plastic cowling. It gleamed a moment like a wavering antenna in the night, then
separated, spinning as its blades locked into place.
Police cars screamed
in pursuit along the runway. But long before they reached the small red
machine, its helicopter-type rotary blades lifted it upward in darkness and it
swung away into the night sky at incredible speed.
Stunned, Solo
stopped running, stood with his gun at his side, watching the small apparition
dissolve into the haze above the emblazoned runway.
Remembering Caillou,
Solo swung around toward the banker and his private jet.
Turning, Solo
reacted to a sharp twinge in his side, pain akin to muscular spasms—or a knife
biting at him:
It was a knife.
Solo cut-short his
turning. A knife blade making itself felt through top coat, jacket and shirt
could inflict irreparable damage if one swung around into it.
"Ah, this is
wise."
"The wish to
stay alive makes wise men of us all," Solo quoted.
He stared into the
face of a man hewn from Moorish stone. Flat eyes shallowly reflected light, the
way a dog's might. Several inches taller than Solo, broader, in London-tailored
fabric tortured into the latest Mod fashion, his goatee was trimmed to a black
point and his hair fitted like a cap close upon his scalp.
Solo glanced down at
the razor-honed blade nibbling at his side. The big man held it in oddly bulky
kid-skin gloves.
Solo said, "To
what do I owe the pleasure of this encounter?"
"We wish to
talk quietly with you, Monsieur," the Moor said in French.
"Moi non parle Francais," Solo said. He shifted his gaze
to the Arab woman close against his other side.
About her
sharp-featured face there was an extreme of loveliness and a worldly arrogance,
as if she were not only a girl that knew the score, but had invented the game.
Her beauty was eye-arresting, but its packaging was tarnished by her
long-brushes with sin.
"He says he
does not speak French," she told the knife-wielding Moor in disgust
"He'd better
learn, if he means to keep butting in like this," the Moor said in
English.
He prodded the knife
less than a sixteenth of an inch, yet Solo had to bite his lip to suppress an
agonized yell.
"Come,"
the Moor said. "We will talk in my office."
They marched him
toward the terminal building, walking close beside him.
Solo scowled. Unless
these two were connected with Caillou's attacker, their accosting him didn't
make pretty good sense.
The Moor jerked his
head to ward an alleyway.
"My
office," he said with a cold grin.
Solo shrugged.
"Where else?'
The Arab woman led
the way Into the darkness. They marched Solo to a partitioned maintenance area.
Solo put his back to
a wall. He said, "Well, what shall we talk about? Lovely weather, isn't
it?"
The Moor stared at
him unblinkingly. In a deft movement he transferred the switch-blade to the
woman.
"I don't have a
lot to say, ma chere ami." The Moor worked the bulky gloves off his
fingers. "But what I do tell you, you will recall for a long time."
He smiled ruefully.
He shook the gloves, lowering them in one hand toward his side.
Watching the big man
closely, Solo reacted too slowly.
The Moor brought the
gloves up, backhanded. They caught Solo in the temple.
Solo's legs melted
to oleo. Before the Moor struck him in the other temple, Solo was already
crumbling to his knees on the ground.
He felt the
battering of those lead-lined gloves. His last conscious thought was that he
understood why the Moor had removed them. If he'd hit him with those gloves on,
he might have bruised his hands, or even fractured a metacarpus bone.
TWO
SOLO SAGGED into the
window seat of the Trans-World jet, cruising at thirty-five thousand feet above
the Atlantic.
He felt
uncomfortably warm in the pressurized cabin.
A compassionate
stewardess leaned toward him.
She was built
cafeteria style: you wanted to help yourself. Even from the depths of his pain,
Solo saw she'd be habit forming.
She winced at his
facial abrasions and contusions. She said, "You poor man. You must be in
total pain."
Solo attempted to
smile.
"No. My left
eyeball hurts hardly at all."
She extended an
international copy of the New York Times. "Do you
feel like reading?"
Solo did not answer.
His gaze froze on
the headline:
WORLD BANK DEVALUES
DOLLAR AND POUND IN INTERNATIONAL TRADE.
He stared at the
newspaper. What he had witnessed tonight tied in with that headline, even if he
didn't know how.
He saw Lester
Caillou, a World Bank director, running frightened toward a plane, attacked
from the darkness.
Many hours later,
Solo carried that disturbing mental image as he left a taxi at Third Avenue and
walked in the east Forties toward the United Nations Complex.
He walked down a
flight of steps, entered Del Floria's Cleaning and Tailoring shop, in the
basement of an inconspicuous whitestone building.
The tailor gave him
a glance, but registered no reaction to Solo's battered face. It had been weeks
since Solo had entered the place, but to Del Floria it might have been last
night.
At the rear of the
shop, Solo stepped between curtains into a dressing booth. He pressed a wall
button.
There was a pause of
three breaths, but in this time much happened in the complex sensory nerves of
the United Network Command for Law and Enforcement beyond an unmarked door in
the wall.
Unseen eyes scanned
him; complex memory tapes in computers whirred, finding him acceptable; inner
mechanisms flicked into action and he was admitted into the chrome and steel
interior of the home base of the world's most far-flung crime-fighting organization.
Despite its
unpretentious appearance, the whitestone building housed cells of bustling
activity— from its roof where a huge, innocent-appearing sign concealed
antennae and sending apparatus to a maze of water-ways connecting it with the
East River and the furthest cranny of the earth, to its main offices where
everything and every one worked ceaselessly to contain, control, eradicate
crime on an international scale.
The receptionist
pinned an identification tag to Solo's lapel. She smelled of violets, but her
curves pressured against the primness of her uniform, and her smile promised
that she played to win. She smiled at his bruises.
"Someday you're
going to learn to take no for an answer, Mr. Solo."
His grin matched
hers. "That'll be the day."
Illya Kuryakin fell
into step be side him inside the brightly lit corridors. A persistent muffled
hum emanating even from the walls showed that all systems throbbed steadily
from the foundation itself and out across the universe, wherever man carried
evil.
Illya was slenderly
made, but his leanness was deceptive. Solo had been trained to kill by every
known method devised in the mind of man. Yet he was continually thankful that
Illya was on his side.
Illya's smile was
hesitant, crooked. His eyes were blue, and a lock of pale blond hair toppled
over his forehead, and it grew shabbily on his collar. He didn't look like what
he was, a Russian-born agent, incredibly trained in every aspect of global espionage.
Illya spoke
casually. "Sorry to hear about Mace's death. Hope it was quick."
"And from the
back," Solo said in remembered rage.
Illya ignored the
contusions swelling Solo's cheeks, discoloring his eyes. "What sort of
trip home?"
Solo shook his head,
spoke casually. "The in-flight movie was lousy. All about spies and people
getting slugged. Completely unbelievable."
ALEXANDER WAVERLY
peered at Illya and Solo across his desk in the Command Room. Cited by almost
every nation for bravery and distinguished service, Waverly might well have
been past the age of enforced retirement, but if he were, it was a fact that
not even U.N.C.L.E.'s computer dared bring before him.
Heavy set, his face
a map of old campaigns, victories, losses and pain, Waverly was one of five men
at the top of the United Command. These executives came from five different
nations, two from behind the iron curtain.
Now he was saying,
"We're convinced THRUSH is behind this scheme to control the World Bank.
If they are allowed to continue even for a week, they could throw the world
into financial chaos."
"How would they
hope to control the world through the World Bank?" Illya said.
"I'll tell you
what I've learned in recent briefings," Waverly said. "I was briefed
by three of the most influential figures in international finance. They were in
panic. It's possible, even easy, with the world divided as it is, to cause depression,
ruin, even to the three or four greatest powers, by manipulating the value of
their currency—forcing down the value of say the pound, the dollar, the franc,
the ruble, while force-lifting the value of some other currency to please those
behind the conspiracy."
"Why hasn't it
been done be fore?" Solo asked.
"It has,"
Waverly said. "Currency of countries has been devalued, a country has been
forced to back its paper currency with gold reserves beyond its means––but
never on such a vast, cruel and inhuman scale as this present conspiracy can be."
"Why would they
want to do it?" Illya said.
"In the minds
of international renegades who care only to rule the world, the economy of
great powers can be destroyed without a qualm. What would THRUSH care what
happened to the dollar? We believe THRUSH is behind this. Our computers have
selected THRUSH as the only alliance so callously heartless as to spread
world-wide ruin, depression. THRUSH could then hope to take over international
banking and thus control all nations."
Solo found himself
remembering the stark fear in Lester Caillou's face.
"How could it
happen?"
"There are many
ways that one man, or several key men in the World Bank could make sudden and
drastic changes in monetary policies that would create international fiscal
crises.
"First, by
buying, demanding gold in payment, collecting all gold, until one nation, or
one group controls gold, an imbalance of fearful proportions would be created.
"Next, causing
business and export-importers to lose faith in any country's currency, so
they'd refuse to accept anything except gold as a medium of exchange, is
another way to create panic.
"If, in panic,
several countries refused to accept a country's currency in exchange for
materials or services, disaster for the country affected, follows.
"Another way
would be to flood a country with counterfeit money, causing panic among banks
and people.
"This
devaluation of the money of the great nations of the free world looks like
THRUSH's first calculated step toward the control of world finances.
"One of its
biggest threats is to peaceful trade between East and West. It's taken a long
time to stabilize it. Commerce between West and East countries has made a one
hundred percent increase in the last seven years. This will be wiped out by
THRUSH manipulation of the dollar."
Waverly gazed at his
operatives. "In THRUSH's hands, this is money gone berserk, leading to
panic, mistrust between nations, especially the Iron Curtain and the free
world."
Illya shook his
head. "How could THRUSH control the World Bank directors?"
"Very likely
they couldn't," Waverly said. "In order to cause disaster, they'd
need to control no more than two or three, perhaps only one. They count on
shock and reaction to help after the value of free world currency is forced
down."
Illya persisted.
"How could they control even one director who must be known down to his
smallest vice by the World Bank and by his own people?"
"We have that
answer, too," Waverly said. "THRUSH owns the Ultimate Computer, as
you men well know. All known facts about World Bank directors are programmed
into their ultimate computer. From these known facts, the Computer gives them
the unknown facts, the weaknesses, strengths, perhaps even the most carefully
guarded secrets in the pasts of these men. THRUSH would then find the weakest
link and—" Waverly spread his hands, letting them complete the thought in
their own minds.
After some moments
Waverly said, "Our task is clear. Simple. We must uncover the plot and
expose it. One factor THRUSH cannot overcome in an operation like this is
publicity. Once their victim of blackmail pressure extortion is located, once
that black secret is exposed, this particular gimmick will no longer work for
them."
Illya spoke slowly.
"But we must have proof, eh? To air suspicions, without proof, would only
increase the panic—"
"Right. And
play THRUSH's game for them," Waverly agreed. "I see I've chosen the
right two men for this vital mission."
Solo spoke without
much hope., "Our computers weren't able to supply the name of the man or
men that THRUSH has gotten under its control?"
Waverly smiled
sourly. "Our computer is not the Ultimate Computer, Napoleon. Using it
against THRUSH's ultimate machine is a sad battle of unequals."
"We know
nothing more than whet you've told us, then?" Napoleon Solo asked.
"We know only
that THRUSH, through its Ultimate Computer, can learn men's weaknesses, can
control them, and through this man or men, can control and wreck the world
financially."
"Their man
might be anyone in the World Bank," Illya Kuryakin said.
Waverly nodded.
"And he will defy exposure, because he will have even more to lose, from
his own view, than THRUSH. Exposure will mean disgrace and death to him. This
is how THRUSH was able to get him under control in the first place."
"Where do we
start?" Illya asked.
Solo yawned
helplessly. "I could start with a shower and a beauty-rest."
Waverly said,
"Hope you liked Paris, Napoleon."
"It wasn't
dull." Solo touched gingerly at his face.
"We're sending
you back there on the next jet."
"I wasn't that
enthused about it—"
"Directors of
the World Bank are meeting in Paris with the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury and
De Gaulle's finance men. This seems an ideal moment to test THRUSH's strength
and power."
"Should be
easy, Illya," Solo said in a low ironic tone. "All THRUSH has is the
Ultimate Computer—and after all, we have each other."
"Precisely my
view," said Alexander Waverly.
THREE
THE AIRFRANCE jet
screamed homing in on the black fabric of its runway laced across the Orly
airfield. The lights of Paris shone distantly an hour before dawn. Even at this
hour the City of Light glowed, sparkling like thrown gems.
Solo and Kuryakin
left Customs, crossed the lobby to pick up the Citroen which had been reserved
in their names. The vivacious French girl at the rental desk handed over the
keys and bade them in French to have a good time.
Two menacing forms
materialized from the fading night shadows as Solo and Illya approached theft
car.
Solo hesitated a few
feet from the Citroen, touching Illya's arm warningly.
The Arab girl and
the huge Moor lounged against the hood of the Citroen.
"So you came
back," the Moor said to Solo in pity and contempt.
"Do you have
the fright concession at this airport?" Solo asked.
"Only when we
need it," the Moor said. "Only when men like you refuse to
learn."
"Friends of
yours, Napoleon?" Illya inquired.
Solo spoke from the
side of his mouth. "Watch his gloves. Metal lined."
"Come
quietly," the Moor said, standing erect. "No one need get hurt."
"Oh, I think
it's time someone got hurt," Solo said urbanely.
Solo lunged suddenly
toward the Moor.
"Look out,
Albert!" the Arab woman screamed.
The Moor laughed,
setting himself. "I'm always careful, Gizelle."
Coming in close to
Albert, Solo feinted with his left. Laughing, the Moor swung upward.
Solo danced lightly
beyond the reach of the wildly swinging arm. He clasped Albert's wrist as the
big Moor drove forward.
Grabbing the arm in
both hands, Solo moved with him, smashing the gloved fist into the fender of
the nearest car.
Albert sobbed in
agony. Solo did not even hesitate. He chopped Albert across the neck with the
side of his hand. Albert toppled, his face striking the car fender. The sound
was like a boulder pounding metal.
Gizelle watched for
one horrified moment. She sprang at Illya, fighting a switchblade from her
pocket.
"Don't forget
you're a lady, Gizelle," Illya warned, "Or I'll have to."
Gizelle sprang the
blade free, flicking it open. At this moment she walked into Illya's fingers,
driven short and hard into her throat.
"You left me no
alternative, ma'am," Illya apologized.
Gizelle retched,
dropped her knife. She sank to the pavement on her knees, hands pressed to her
throat, face livid.
Illya jerked his
head toward the Citroen, opening the door as he did.
Solo however, tossed
him the keys. "I want Albert to recall this evening for a long time,"
he said curtly.
Illya scowled.
"It's not like you to let rage suspend reason, Solo."
"I've never
been quite this angry."
"You're making
a mistake, So lo. Let's get out of here."
Fatigue and outrage
made Solo hoarse. "I think it would be a mistake to let them off so
lightly."
Illya slid across
the seat under the wheel. He inserted the key in to the ignition switch,
watching Solo through the windshield.
Solo lifted the car
hood. On the pavement the Arab Gizelle remained crouched, watching in anguish.
Solo hefted the Moor, draped him across the fender, both his gloved hands
extended over the engine block.
Solo thrust the
lead-lined gloves over the spark-plugs, lowered the hood across Albert's back.
"Start the
car," he ordered.
Illya turned the
key. The car motor sprang to life. Albert screamed; the hood was thrown upward.
Albert lunged away, falling across the walk. He trembled all over. People
turned, staring.
Calmly Solo lowered
the hood, secured it.
He got into the ear
beside Illya.
"Now let's
go," he said.
Illya laughed.
"Vengeance is a great thing with you, isn't it, Napoleon?"
Solo shrugged and
laid his head on the seat rest. He stared at the ceiling of the compact.
"My grandmother told me that if I always vented my rage on the objects of
my rage, I wouldn't build up frustrations and end with a tic."
Illya reversed the
car, turned it toward the Paris exit. "She must have been a great old
lady. Wonder what she'd say we should do about a car that is following
us?"
Solo sat up, checked
through the rear window.
"Lose it,"
he advised.
"Your
grandmother was a crunchy old girl, wasn't she?" Illya said, flooring the
accelerator.
"She was all we
could afford at the time," Solo replied. "And we wouldn't have been
here without her."
The car behind them
made no pretense it was not trailing the Citroen.
When Illya touched
the brake at the highway entrance, the convertible slapped against the rear
bumper.
Illya raced forward,
turning in to the sparse truck traffic of early morning.
The convertible
swung out behind them. Solo twisted on the bucket seat, watching it. He touched
at the U.N.C.L.E. Special in its Berns-Martin shoulder holster.
"How many in
the car?" Illya inquired, gripping the wheel with both hands.
"The top is
up," Solo said. "Too dark to see. We know at least there's a maniac
at the wheel."
"Got a bit of
sticky news for you," Illya said after a moment. "Sixty seems to be
our top speed."
The convertible
pounced forward alongside them. Illya jerked the wheel, taking the Citroen to
the edge of the road, slamming on brakes and then gunning it as the convertible
whipped toward them.
"Couple of
vegetable trucks," Solo said. "There's room for us between them. We
won't make any time, but it's the safest spot I can think of at the
moment."
"That
convertible won't let us pass that rear truck." Illya protested.
"Perhaps not on
the left," Solo agreed calmly.
Illya's blue eyes
widened. "Pass on—the right?"
"My
grandmother's watchword was resourcefulness, Illya."
"I wish she
were driving."
"So do I, but
we can't have everything."
There was the scream
of metal as the convertible nudged at the Citroen's rear fender.
Illya swerved the
car hard to the right, kept going. The Citroen struck the road shoulder,
bouncing and chattering.
The trucker ahead,
catching a glimpse of the compact in his off-mirror, struck his horn violently.
His Gallic curses turned the dawn a savage blue.
Illya swung in ahead
of the truck, missing its huge right front wheel by inches.
Both Illya and Solo
grabbed leather, because at this same instant, the convertible whipped from the
left into the narrow space between the two trucks.
Horns blared, brakes
squealed. Only the swearing, weeping driver in the truck behind averted a
collision by stomping on his brakes, fading behind them as if carried away on
the wind.
Illya muttered
something in a language that Solo didn't understand, and that perhaps Kuryakin
didn't understand, either, words invented for this fearful moment.
The convertible bore
in upon them, forcing them off the pavement.
"One small last
trick remaining in my bag," Illya said half to himself.
He jerked hard right
on the wheel and floored the gas pedal, whipping the Citroen to the inside of
the lead truck, as he had done the first one.
They saw the
convertible, still pulling into them, try to straighten. At this moment, the
truck driver, alerted by horns and brakes behind him earlier, now slammed on
his brakes instinctively.
The convertible in
that brief instant raced toward the rear of the slowing truck on collision
course.
At the last moment
it was wheeled hard right, turning at a forty-five degree angle, going off the
pavement, across the shoulders, down a ditch between stately chestnut trees,
smashing hard into a five-foot hedgerow.
Illya battled the
Citroen back into the inside lane of the highway. His knuckles showed gray on
the steering wheel. His mouth was a taut line and he breathed heavily through
flared nostrils.
He kept his stricken
gaze on the highway ahead.
Solo turned on the
seat, watching the convertible disappear in the distance behind them. "I
was just wondering—"
"Yes,
Napoleon?"
"Where could we
get breakfast at this hour? You and my grandmother have worked me up one
ring-a-ding of an appetite."
FOUR
SOLO AND ILLYA
walked into the offices of Lester Caillou in the Paris banking district at ten
that morning.
The reception room,
done in contemporary French styling, was vacant when they entered. A chair was
pushed back from the receptionist's desk. The typewriter was uncovered. A
telephone lay off its cradle.
Subdued voices
washed in from the connecting office.
Illya wandered about
the room, gazed through a window at the view of the gardens and the river
beyond. Solo rapped at the inner door.
Instantly, the
voices ceased. Presently, a tall young woman in tight skirt, white blouse, hair
piled dark and high in a lacquered roll, came through the door and closed it
carefully behind her.
"What do you
wish?" she asked in French. Her face was pale.
"We wish to see
Monsieur Lester Caillou," Solo said.
She tossed a
troubled gaze across her shoulder, attempted a smile that made her wan cheeks
more bleak. "M'sieur Caillou arrives at eleven o'clock."
Solo nodded.
"Then we'll wait."
"Could I be of
some service?" the girl asked, perspiring.
"But
certainly," Illya said. "Tell M'sieur Caillou we are here."
"He arrives at
eleven," the girl repeated, in French.
"She's
lying," Illya said to Solo in English. "She's really lovely,
though."
"Yes."
Solo gazed admiringly at the secretary. "I'd say about forty-five—"
"Forty-five?"
Illya looked astounded. "Twenty, perhaps."
"Forty-five-twenty-four-thirty-six,"
Solo said smiling. The girl smiled too, unwillingly. "That's better,
Mam'selle. I wondered when you'd admit to speaking English."
"M'sieur
Caillou still doesn't arrive until eleven," she said.
"We are old
friends," Solo said. "Would he mind our waiting in his office?"
He walked past her
and opened the door. She caught at his arm and he heard her sharp intake of
breath.
Her gasp matched his
own.
In the inner office,
staring at him, stood Albert, Gizelle and a young blonde woman who appeared
possessed of more physical assets than the World Bank itself.
The blonde also
sported a swollen, purpled eye, and her left arm rode a sling. In her other
hand she held a small, snubbed .25 caliber pistol.
"Do come on in,
Mr. Solo," she said.
Across her shoulder,
Solo spoke five sharp words: "Get out of here, Illya."
Illya beat a hasty
retreat toward the connecting office door, but Solo barred their way.
The blonde said,
"Don't force me to shoot you, Mr. Solo. Because of you, I'm lucky to be
alive."
"You don't
drive well, do you?" Solo said.
"Don't push
it," she warned.
Albert and Gizelle
caught him roughly, pulling him into the inner office.
Solo saw in surprise
that the secretary followed.
"I don't
understand this," she said shakily. "I don't know these people."
"You don't have
to know us, Yvonne," the blonde said. "Just keep your mouth closed
and do as you're told."
Yvonne sagged
against the door, watching them.
The blonde nodded
toward Solo. "Search him, Albert."
Albert moved warily
around Solo, gripping his arms, pinning him helplessly. He motioned to Gizelle,
who removed Solo's gun from its shoulder holster and then retreated as if
relieved to be out of Solo's reach. Gizelle had learned one thing this morning:
a healthy respect for her enemy.
"That's
all," Gizelle said.
"Secure
him," the blonde ordered.
"You'll look
pretty wild walking me through the Rothschild bank building in handcuffs,"
Solo said.
She did not smile.
"Allow us to fret over details."
With Albert holding
Solo, Gizelle moved in warily. She clipped chained cuffs to Solo's wrists. The
chains in turn were fastened to a metal belt about his waist, concealed by his
jacket. The hidden chains permitted little movement of his arms but were unnoticeable
unless one searched purposely.
"Ingenious,"
Solo said.
"You'll find we
get everything we want—eventually," the blonde said. "All right.
Let's go. You walk out between Albert and Gizelle. The first move you make, I
fire this gun into your spine. You have a great deal more to lose at this
moment than we do."
The corridor was
vacant. The blonde nodded and Albert nudged Solo forward.
Solo walked between
the hoodlums, aware the blonde was immediately behind, the small automatic
concealed by her purse.
The elevator opened.
The operator looked bored. "Down?"
"Ground
floor," the blonde said.
Solo took one last
check of the corridor. There was no sign of Illya. He sighed heavily, entered
the ornate brass cage between Albert and Gizelle.
The blonde stood
behind the operator, some feet from Solo.
Solo watched the
floor-indicator, saw the red light calling for a stop at the third floor. He
set himself.
As the operator
lifted the handle to stop at the third floor, Solo brought his hand forward as
far as the metal permitted, then slapped backward upon Albert's gloves as hard
as possible.
His hunch was
correct. Albert cried out in sudden pain. Gizelle screamed in reaction, lunging
back away from Solo.
Solo snagged the
tails of Gizelle's jacket, wrenching her between himself and the armed blonde.
The lift stopped,
but before the door slid open the blonde acted.
She jabbed the gun
in the operator's back. "Don't open that door—"
"But,
madame—"
She pressed the gun
harder. "This is police business. You will proceed to the ground floor. At
once, without stopping."
By now, Albert had
his agony under control. He held his painful hands out at his side, but used
his bulky body to bull Solo back against the wall.
"Now, Mr.
Solo," the blonde said. "What have you gained with your foolish
games?"
Solo shrugged.
"A good question. Unfortunately, I have no good answers."
At eleven Lester
Caillou entered his inner office, accompanied by his secretary.
Caillou stopped so
abruptly just within his door that Yvonne walked into him, and flustered, cried
out apologetically.
Illya Kuryakin
perched at ease in the window seat beyond Caillou's desk. He swung his legs,
watching them with intent interest.
Caillou gazed at him
blankly, and then peered at his secretary. "Who is this man, Miss Petain?
What is the meaning of this intrusion?"
Yvonne Petain was
unable to reply. Flustered and unnerved by this incredible morning, she burst
into tears.
"There you
are," Illya said. "That explains everything."
Caillou stared a
moment at his secretary, then he said placatingly, "It's all right,
Yvonne. I will call you later. You may go now."
Yvonne stopped
crying, gazing at her employer, her eyes red-rimmed. "You don't wish an
alarm?"
"Of course not.
This is no time for notoriety. I'm quite capable of handling this young
man." He turned again toward Illya as the secretary closed the door behind
her. There was still no faint light of recollection in his dark eyes. "How
did you get in here?"
Now Illya stood up,
finding that he gazed at Caillou as puzzedly as Yvonne had. First, Caillou
seemed at ease, master of all situations as Illya remembered him from the wild
days in Iran.
Yet hadn't Solo
pegged Caillou's behavior at Orly Airport as surreptitious, the actions of a
man sick with fright'?
And most mystifying
of all, why couldn't Caillou remember him? If it hadn't been for him and Solo,
Caillou's carcass would now be rotting under a few feet of desert sand.
Still, the shaky
condition of world finance, of the World Bank itself, could explain erratic
behavior, even Caillou's not recognizing him at once, unexpectedly confronting
him in his own office.
"Why shouldn't
I get in here?" Illya asked, watching the banker. The years had made
inroads. The thin face was lined, the hair grayer, the eyes less lively.
"In France one can always find someone to bribe, eh?"
Caillou did not
smile.
Illya laughed.
"And anyhow, an old Arab buddy of yours from firing squad days like me—who
would be heartless enough to deny me entrance through your private exit?"
Caillou studied him
intently. A look of relief washed across his face. He came around the desk,
hand extended. "Of course! How stupid of me! Of course, you're
Il1—Illya—"
"Kuryakin,"
Illya said warmly, shaking hands.
"Kuryakin, the
man who saved me from a firing squad. How good it is to see you again, ma chere ami."
He nodded toward a
leather chair pulled near his ornate desk. He placed his hat upon a hat tree,
studied himself in the dark mirror, sat behind his desk.
"You met
another old friend a few nights ago, Lester," Illya said. "At Orly
Airport. You didn't recognize him, either."
Caillou appeared to
search desperately in the files of his mind. "Solo—Napoleon Solo?"
Illya smiled.
"He was upset when you brushed him off."
"Brushed Solo
off? What does this mean? I was upset. Yes. This terrible business. So much on
my mind. I hope you will apologize to him." Then Caillou sank back, hardly
at ease, even in his own office. "In what way may I serve you?"
Illya grinned.
"Solo and I had hoped to be of service to you— with your help, of
course."
"Anything. But
how could you hope to serve me?"
"I'm sure it's
no news to you that the dollar, the pound and the ruble have been devalued in
the world market. A sudden, inexplicable drop in their value, a demand for gold
payments—"
"A desperate
situation—for some countries."
Illya stared at him,
frowning. "Lester! Those nations lead the world."
"Perhaps it is
time for a new world leader."
"Is this you
talking? Surely De Gaulle's government knows a devalued dollar will further
depress the franc—"
"It is nothing
Bon Charlie would wish."
Illya leaned
forward. "We've a good idea who would want panic and fiscal chaos. That's
why I've come to you."
"Me?"
Caillou
straightened. "What would I have to do with such matters?"
"You've gotten
nervous since the old days in Iran," Kuryakin said. "Staying alive in
the world of finance can be a slower, but more agonizing death than that of the
firing squad, my friend.
"We plan to
expose the plot to wreck money values. We plan to expose the people behind it.
I came to you as an old friend to enlist your aid in checking on the actions
taken in international monetary affairs. We believe that through you, we can
locate the people responsible and expose them."
After a moment
Caillou nodded. "Naturally I'll do anything I can."
Illya smiled and
stood up. "Good. This is what we were sure we'd hear from you."
"What else
would you anticipate to hear from an old friend?"
Illya laughed and
nodded. "Right. You see, I still wear it." He held up his wrist,
shooting his cuff and displaying the twin to the Swiss chronometer worn by
Solo.
"What?"
Caillou looked con fused.
"The watch,
Lester!"
Caillou gazed at the
watch, puzzled. "Yes. Very nice watch, indeed."
Illya caught his
breath and retreated a step, staring at the banker.
Caillou stiffened.
"What's wrong, old friend?"
Illya dampened his
lips with the tip of his tongue. "Nothing, old friend,
I've just sort of goofed, that's all."
He continued to back
across the lavishly furnished office, not taking his gaze from Caillou's face.
He reached behind him, turned the knob. He opened the door, stepped out into
the midoffice of the suite.
Closing Caillou's
door, Illya turned and walked swiftly toward the reception room.
Entering it, he
heard the rasping buzz of the intercom summon Yvonne into Caillou's inner
Yvonne sat at her
desk, face gray. She ignored the buzzer. She stared up at Illya.
"It's been one
of those mornings when nothing goes right, hasn't it?" Illya said
sympathetically. He walked out.
The buzzer continued
waspishly. Yvonne got up, entered Caillou's office.
Caillou stood in the
center of the room. He held out a small card with a telephone number on it. His
hand shook.
"Get me a
private, outside line," he ordered. "Call this number."
"For whom shall
I ask?"
Caillou's voice
crackled in rage.
"Never mind!
Just get me the outside line. I'll talk to whoever answers."
PART TWO: INCIDENT OF A WORLD IN PANIC
ILLYA OPENED the
corridor door of Caillou's office and stepped outside.
"Kuryakin!"
The name was
whispered at him, hissed.
He wheeled around.
He was not fast enough. As he turned, leaded gloves smashed across his eyes. He
grunted in pain, and so did Albert.
Sickness spread out
through Illya from the bridge of his nose.
Rocked on his heels,
Illya staggered. He toppled against a wall and shook his head, trying to clear
it.
Albert advanced upon
him.
Illya gazed up
through an occluding red haze at the pointed beard and old-bronze features of
the Moor.
The Moor laughed.
"So I get you at last, eh?"
Illya managed to
speak lightly through the pain clouding his mind. "What kept you?"
Albert showed him
the snout of a Biretta. "Never mind that. Do you come quietly?"
Illya looked at the
gun.
"The only way
to go," he said. He straightened. Albert inclined his head toward the rear
of the corridor.
"I warn
you," Albert said. "Do not push me. You are worth nothing to us
alive."
"You keep
talking like this, Albert, and I'll begin to think you don't like me,"
Illya said.
Albert snorted.
"Keep walking."
They passed the bank
of public lifts, walked to the service elevator.
Keeping the gun
fixed on Illya, Albert pressed the button.
The doors parted.
Albert motioned with the gun. Illya preceded him into the cage
The elevator plunged
downward.
Suddenly Illya
lurched toward the controls, grabbed the lever, thrusting it downward.
Albert pressed the
trigger instinctively,
The sound was like a
cannon in the metal cage.
The roar
reverberated through the well, bouncing off the sump and the roof.
The bullet imbedded
itself inches from Illya in the metal. He wheeled around, whistling. "I
never thought you'd do that. They must have heard that in every part of this
building!"
"I could have
gotten you between the eyes if I wished."
"What would you
do carrying a corpse around?"
"Keep pushing
me! You will find out!" Albert stepped forward, waving the gun. "Let
go of that handle!"
As he spoke he
reached out for it.
"As you
say," Illya said. He held his breath, timing it perfectly.
He released the
handle. It flew upward as Albert's hand came toward it.
Albert screamed in
pain as the handle slapped across his agonized hand.
Illya brought his
fist upward, sinking it wrist-deep under Albert's belt. Albert fired again, the
shot going into the flooring. Illya chopped Albert across the neck with the
side of his hand.
For what seemed a
breathless eternity, Albert stood unmoving, staring at Illya in a mixture of
pain and contempt.
Illya caught his
breath. His hand ached as if he had karate-chopped a four-by-four, and yet the
big Moor continued to stand, peering at him.
The elevator moved
downward again.
Illya stood tautly,
waiting for the Moor to attack him again.
Albert disintegrated
gradually.
First, his gloved
hand loosened and the gun toppled to the flooring.
Then a strange new
emptiness veiled his eyes, they rolled up on their sockets.
Albert slumped to
his knees. He gazed up at Illya for another moment as if unable to believe what
was happening to him. Then, as the elevator stopped, its doors parted, he
sprawled forward on his face and lay still, in the elevator doorway.
For a moment Illya
hesitated. Through the open door he saw the elevator had reached a supply
basement.
He knelt, took up
the gun Albert had dropped. Then he dropped it into his pocket and stepped
across the prone hoodlum's form.
He paused, gazing
down at the unconscious man.
"I do hope you
won't be too inconvenienced explaining to your friends bow this happened, old
fellow."
Illya turned then
and hurried toward an alley exit.
TWO
GIZELLE UNLOCKED the
door on the third floor of a sidestreet hotel.
Solo waited
politely, but the blonde put her hand in the small of his back and thrust him
forward into the room,
Gizelle and the
blonde followed. The blonde locked the door, removed the key and dropped it
down into her copious bosom.
"Marie,"
Gizelle said, worried. "Where is Albert? He should be here by now."
The blonde gazed at
her coldly. "Can't you live five minutes without that Moor?"
Gizelle winced.
"I would not be in––this—except for Albert. This is not my kind of
thing."
Marie laughed
harshly. "No. We know what kind of thing yours is—luring suckers into the
alley for your precious Albert to mug them. You're in something big this time.
If you do what you're told, maybe you and your sweet Albert will have enough so
you won't have to rob drunks in an alley anymore."
Gizelle walked to
the window and stood staring down at the street.
She shivered.
Marie's voice rasped
at Gizelle. "Come take this gun and guard him. I must call the doctor at
once."
"Aren't you
feeling well, Marie?" Solo inquired in mock solicitude.
Marie lashed out,
shoving Solo, and he fell upon the bed on his back. "And stay there—"
"Alone? Like
this?"
"And keep
quiet." She spoke over her shoulder. "Come on, Gizelle. Take the
gun."
Gizelle crossed the
room unwillingly.
She took the gun
reluctantly. Solo saw that her earlier encounter had left her frightened, even
when she held the artillery.
Marie backed to the
French phone, lifted the receiver.
Solo made a false
leap toward Gizelle. The dark-skinned girl screamed and almost dropped the gun.
Marie threw the
phone into its cradle, ran across to her. Her face was livid.
"The next time
he does a thing like that," Marie raved, "shoot him."
Gizelle nodded
numbly.
Marie turned, her
face twisted. She placed her hands on her hips. "You think I don't know
how to quiet you down?"
Solo grinned up at
her. "I know how to quiet you down, too, Marie."
Marie tossed her
blonde head in contempt. "Is that all you think about—love?"
"If you've
never thought about it, Marie, don't knock it," Solo said.
"Save this kind
of talk for women like Gizelle—"
"I like big
blondes, Marie."
"You'll never
get me in your arms."
"That's too
bad. You don't know what you're missing—"
"Huh!"
Marie's mouth twisted. "All men are pigs."
"That's why
you're so full of war, Marie," Solo taunted her. "You hate
love."
"I hate
men."
"Sure. And
you're turning to vinegar."
After a moment of
staring down at Solo, unblinking, Marie returned to the phone.
Gizelle retreated a
couple of steps, holding the gun on Solo in a trembling hand.
Solo smiled at her.
"I think you'd be happier back in the alleys, Marie."
Her chin tilted.
"We are going to be rich."
"You and
Albert?"
"That's right.
We are through with the old life. We will be rich."
"Albert tell
you that?"
"Be
quiet!" Marie ordered. "This call is important."
Solo lay silently on
the old iron four-poster bed, watching the blonde at the phone. She spoke
finally, "Hello, Doctor. Marie. That's why I called you. No. I have not
failed this time. I told you I would not. No, I don't have both of them. I have
Napoleon Solo, and soon the other one will be here. Albert is returned to find
him now. Cars are coming for us? How soon may we expect them?"
Solo sat up on the
bed as Marie continued to speak with deference and servility to the
"doctor" on the phone.
"Stay
there," Gizelle ordered weakly. She tilted up the gun.
"Press the
trigger, Gizelle," Solo said.
She winced, her face
bleak.
"I don't want
to have to kill you," she said, almost pleading.
Solo stood up.
"Looks like you'll have to, Gizelle."
Marie slapped her
hand over the phone speaker. "Shoot him, you fool!"
Solo leaped forward,
going around the table. He caught at Marie, slipping his arm about her waist,
putting her between him and Gizelle.
Marie was raging
crazily at her. Gizelle whispered frantically, "Oh, Albert—"
"Albert won't
help you now!" Marie raged. "I tell you, shoot him." She spoke
again into the phone. "No, Doctor, I assure you everything's under control
here."
"The doctor's
going to think you're an awful liar," Solo whispered into Marie's ear.
She kicked backward,
striking his shins with her pointed heel.
Solo gasped, but
tightened his grasp on her. As she tried to re place the receiver, he caught
it.
He ripped it from
her grasp, brought it across her throat. Marie gasped, wheeling them around.
She was stronger than Solo had believed.
Gizelle fired. Only
the fact that she was trembling in terror saved either Solo, her target, or
Marie. The bullet whipped past them, splatting against the wall.
Solo caught the
wire, looping it around Marie's arms. He spun her until the wire held her
immobile. She spat at him, raging.
Across her head,
Solo saw that Gizelle had retreated to the door. She braced herself against it,
holding the smoking gun at arm length as though she hated it almost as much as
she feared it.
"Shoot
him!" Marie raged at Gizelle.
Reaching across
Marie's shoulder, Solo thrust his hand down the front of her dress, coming up
with keys to his cuffs and the door.
"Delightful
cache you have there, my dear," Solo said.
Marie swore at him
in blistering French, English and Italian.
Holding Marie before
him, Solo unlocked his cuffs, let them fall before him.
Then he loosened the
chain about his waist.
As Marie raged, he
snapped one of the cuffs on her. Then he thrust her forward, moving her toward
Gizelle.
The dark-skinned
girl wailed at them. "Stay there! Stay away from me!"
Her hand shook so
badly she almost dropped the gun.
Marie screamed at
her.
Suddenly Gizelle
wheeled around, grabbing at the doorknob, trying to fight her way from the
room.
Solo pushed Marie
against her. He snapped one of the cuffs on Gizelle. The Arab girl sobbed,
between rage and relief.
Solo reached out and
took the gun from her unprotesting fingers. It was as if she were pleased to
lose it.
Sole led them at the
end of the chain to the foot of the bed. He locked the chain to the iron post.
"I'll leave you
girls now," be said. "I know you've got a lot to say to each
other."
Marie turned the air
blue with her swearing.
Solo spoke to
Gizelle. "She's beginning to repeat herself. Why don't you teach her some
Arabic?"
Marie spat at him
again, frustrated.
Solo stood another
moment, regarding them. "You might pull the bed over to the phone, but
you've pulled the phone out of the wall." He shook his head. "Au
revoir, Marie, Gizelle. I hope you're able to think of something except bad
words."
"You pig!"
Marie wailed at him. "Are you such a fool that you believe the doctor will
let you get away with this?"
He locked the hotel
room door behind him. As he came off the lower step, he could hear Marie
screaming.
At the street door
he paused. A black sedan sped into the street and slammed to a screeching stop
at the curb.
Holding his breath,
Solo retreated into the shadowed hall. The doors were thrown open on the car.
Four men piled out, hurrying across the walk.
Solo leaned against
the wall until the four of them ran past him, going up the steps. When the last
one was on the first landing, Solo stepped through the door, went down to the
sidewalk and walked away rapidly.
He did not look
back.
Twenty minutes later
he reached the hotel where he had registered earlier with Illya.
As he took the key
from the room clerk, he caught a faint shiftiness in the man's eyes. He went
taut, thinking that death played with you—it missed you only by inches—it had
allies everywhere.
Two men moved from
chairs to ward the elevator. Solo saw them from the corners of his eyes.
He thanked the room
clerk, turned away. He walked toward the elevator, at the last moment changed
his mind and strode swiftly into the stairwell.
He ran up the steps.
At the second floor, he looked back; the two men were following him.
He moved against the
wall, going upward swiftly.
Panting, he came out
of the stairwell on the fifth floor. The first thing he saw was a man standing
too casually at the far end of the corridor.
He turned, seeing
another at the other end. He shifted his jacket up on his shoulders, thinking
that the doctor worked swiftly when aroused.
The two men moved
away from their posts. Behind him, Solo heard the hurrying steps on the stairs.
He strode
purposefully, trying to conceal any sign of panic, toward his door. He held his
key ready to thrust it into the lock. Then he thought: even if he made it that
far there was no time to unlock the door. They'd be on him.
He reached for his
gun, realizing in that instant that it was gone and that he had alerted the two
men who might not until this moment have been certain he was their prey.
He walked faster,
reaching the key toward the lock. But as his hand touched the door, it was
pulled open.
He hesitated, seeing
they were waiting for him everywhere, and he had walked into a trap.
He would have
retreated, but Illya reached out, snagged his wrist, jerked him through the
opening. Illya slammed the door in the faces of the pursuers.
"Welcome to the
Tower of London," Illya said.
Solo flinched,
"How about this? Prisoners, at twenty-five dollars a day!''
Illya exhaled and
sat down on the bed. "They've been out there for some time. I tried to go
out, but they were unpleasant about it, and I changed my mind. I've been
thinking about calling the law."
Solo exhaled.
"We are the law, Illya."
Kuryakin grinned.
"Oh, yes. I keep forgetting. This means we're in something of a real bind
then, doesn't it?"
"If you care
for understatement."
Solo prowled the
room. From his window he saw men standing in the street below, peering up at
him.
Solo lifted his
gaze. In windows across the busy street he saw other men, armed with guns,
telescopes, fixed on his window.
He retreated a step.
He spoke over his
shoulder. "The doctor is really mad with us."
"Who's the
doctor?" Illya said.
"It beats
me."
He moved his gaze
across the faces of the watching men, men in shadows, without faces, standing
tautly. They waited down there, and he knew they were in the corridors.
"That's the way
I feel about Caillou," Illya said behind him.
Solo moved away from
the window.
"What do you
mean?" he asked.
"Caillou. It
beats me." Illya shook his head. "I got back into his office. I
waited in there until he came in."
"You talked to
him?"
"I talked to
Caillou's face."
"What are you
talking about?"
Illya scowled.
"I only learned one thing in that office. The man I talked to isn't
Caillou."
Solo stared at him.
"Are you coming unglued?"
"I don't know.
I may be. All I know for sure is that the man in Caillou's office is no more
Caillou than I am." Illya paced. "Are you sure the man you met that
night at Orly was Caillou?"
Solo considered.
Finally, he nodded. "It was Caillou, all right. He recognized me—"
"And your
watch?"
"Yes. It was
Caillou. Besides, they tried to kill Caillou. That night."
They sat some
moments in silence, trying to add what they had. At last, Illya said,
"Suppose that man at Orly was really Caillou. Suppose he was trying to get
away."
Solo nodded.
"Sure. THRUSH got something on him. They forced him to go along with them.
Then it got so bad that Caillou couldn't stomach it. He tried to run. They were
after him—that's why he was so scared when I spoke his name. Out on the runway
they tried to kill him—"
"Maybe they
have," Illya said.
"I didn't see
him any more. Albert and his Arab girlfriend pushed me in a corner—"
"Then they must
have finished Caillou off and put a ringer in his place at the banking company.
The guy there didn't know me until I told him who I was. And he had no idea at
all that the real Caillou had given me this watch!"
"Little trivia
that THRUSH's computers overlooked," Solo said.
"How about
this?" Illya said, his eyes glowing as he figured the angles. "THRUSH
saw that Caillou was going to be hard to handle, so they got a ringer ready to
run in his place. Only Caillou broke and ran ahead of time, and we showed up, and
that forced them to bring in the ringer—"
"Before he was
fully briefed!" Solo nodded. "They had to use him before he was
ready."
"Which brings
us right back to the real Caillou. Where is he? Is he
still alive? Dead?"
"That's not
fair. You've got all the questions and I don't have any answers."
"We've got to
find the real Caillou, haven't we? Before the ringer can really take his
place?"
"There you go
with the questions again."
"We can't sit
around here, can we? How are we going to get out of here?"
"I told you!
Try with some answers already."
"Are you nuts?
If I had answers, I wouldn't have to stand around here yakking like this."
A knocking at the
door rasped across his words. Solo and Illya exchanged glances. The knock was
repeated, frantic now.
Illya pounced across
the room like a lynx. He pressed his face against the door facing. "Who's
there?"
"I. Yvonne.
Please. Let me in. Hurry!"
"Wonder what
your grandmother would say in this situation?" Illya said. He slapped off
the locks, opened the door.
His eyes widened.
Two men bore down on
Caillou's terrified secretary from both ways along the corridor. Their guns
were drawn. As they reached out for her, Illya grasped her extended arm and
yanked her through the opening.
She went stumbling
across the room, trying to catch her balance.
"Solo!"
Illya whispered.
Solo leaped to his
aid. He struck the door with his shoulder as the men outside landed against it.
During the next fraction of a second, which seemed an hour, the door trembled,
neither closed, nor open.
Then the lock
clicked into place. Illya slapped the second lock into place, and he and Solo
sagged against the door, sighing.
They stared at the
secretary, who finally had straightened and stood facing them, her eyes wide,
swimming with fright.
"I hope you
don't mind," Illya said to Yvonne, "if I ask you a few
questions."
"He's a bear
for questions," Solo said. "Not much for answers, but wild with
questions."
Illya stared at
Yvonne. "How did you get in here?"
She stared at him,
her full lips parted. "You helped me in! Those men—"
"Those men just
let you walk up to the door?"
"Yes. Then they
came running toward me—"
"All right.
We'll let that go for now. How did you know where to find us?"
She frowned.
"Why, I knew all along. We got a telegram from the director of the World
Bank saying you and Mr. Solo would be at this hotel, that you would visit Mr.
Caillou, and we were to offer you every assistance."
"You mind my
saying I don't believe you?" Illya said.
"Another
question," Solo interposed.
Yvonne straightened
angrily. She looked even more intriguing with her shoulders back. "If you
doubt me, then I will leave," she said. "I will not stay where I am
not trusted."
She turned and
strode across the room to the window.
Sole sprinted from
the door. She wheeled around, gazing at him in terror as he raced toward her.
He thrust her away from the window as a bu1let splatted into its sill.
She toppled this
time, landing hard on the carpeting. She stared up at them, her lips quivering.
"We're only
trying to make you feel at home," Illya said.
"I want to get
out of here," Yvonne sobbed.
Illya shrugged.
"We share your sentiments. But at the moment we're not sure just how to
work it."
"What he means
is," Solo said, "we don't have an idea in the world."
Solo helped Yvonne
to her feet and led her to a couch. He sat down with her, dabbing at her eyes
with his handkerchief.
"How come you
take all the best assignments?" Illya said.
Solo put his arm
about Yvonne. She was on the brink of hysterics.
"Why did you
come here, Yvonne"
Her lips trembled.
"I need help. My employer, Monsieur Caillou, needs help. Something is
wrong. I never saw him act like he did today."
"There was
something wrong with him today, all right," Illya agreed.
She looked up,
troubled. "Oh, did you notice it, too?"
"In what ways
did he seem strange to you?" Solo prompted.
"In the calls
he made. In the people who came to visit him—people I have never seen before.
He didn't know where anything was. His temper, so short—Monsieur Caillou is one
of the most patient of men."
"This was one
of his off days," Illya told her.
"Something is
very wrong," Yvonne persisted. "As soon as Monsieur Caillou left the
office today, I came looking for you. I hoped you could help him."
"At the moment
I'm afraid we could use a spot of help ourselves," Illya said.
Solo said,
"Where did Caillou go when he finally left his office, Yvonne?"
"I don't know.
To his chateau, I suppose."
"Do you know
where it is'?"
"Yes, of
course."
Solo sighed heavily.
"Suppose we were some way able to get out of this room, Yvonne. Would you
take us to Caillou's chateau?"
"But of
course."
Solo grinned.
"Well, that part was easy." He stared at Yvonne a moment, and then at
Illya. "Suppose you start, Yvonne, by giving Illya your dress."
"What?"
Yvonne stared at him.
"I echo
that," Illya said. "I don't even want her dress. It'll never fit
me."
But Yvonne was
already loosening zippers, pulling the dress up over her head.
Her hair mussed, her
face flushed, Yvonne handed her dress to Solo. He gazed a moment, admiring her
in a black lace slip, then tossed the dress to Illya.
"Put it
on," he told Kuryakin. "Give Yvonne your clothes."
"I'll just go
in the bathroom to change," Illya said. "After all, I'm not wearing a
black lace slip." He took a step toward the bath, paused. "You mind
saying why I'm doing this?"
"That dress is
your color," Solo told him. "It will do magic things for your eyes.
Besides, if you can get out in the hall, make the guards out there think you're
Yvonne until they get close enough, you can explode a gas pill. That'll give us
time to clear out of here."
Illya shook his
head. "With me looking like a female impersonator."
"This is
Paris," Solo told him. "Don't fight. Switch."
As Illya turned
toward the bath room again, there was a knock on the door. He hesitated,
tautly, glanced across his shoulder. "I had no idea we were so
popular."
Solo crossed the
room. He stood
"Bellboy,
M'sieur. I have a message."
"Push it under
the door."
There was a pause.
Then, "I'm afraid I can't do that, sir."
Solo and Illya
exchanged knowing glances.
"Here we go
again," Solo said. He spoke toward the door again. "Just a
moment."
Illya tossed the
dress to Yvonne. "Put it back on. We've just abandoned Plan One. Alternate
Plan Ten."
"Plan
Ten?" Yvonne stared at him, puzzled. "What on earth is Plan
Ten?"
"Pray a
little," Illya told her.
They waited for
Yvonne to pull on her dress, straighten it. She was still yanking at zippers,
patting at her hair, when Solo caught her arm and pulled her close against the
wall behind him at the doorway.
"Monsieur?"
the bellboy said in his calmest, most polite tone.
Yvonne was
trembling, her teeth chattering.
Solo gave her a
pen-sized aluminum vial with a plastic cone at its top.
"Oxygen,"
he told her. "What ever you do, don't take that nose cone from your face
until we're out of here."
The bellboy called
again, impatiently. "M'sieur, the message is most urgent."
"I'm anxious to
get it," Solo called pleasantly. "I'm just not quite ready for
guests."
He stared at Illya,
pressed against the wall, across the door from him. Illya nodded.
They timed their
movements precisely.
As Solo unlocked and
opened the door, thrusting it wide, Illya smashed a gas-pill upon the floor.
Instantly, grey
clouds of smoke erupted from the carpeting. The room turned white with smoke.
In that same moment,
the bell boy was thrust into the room ahead of two armed men.
They were carried
forward into the room under their own impetus.
"This is the
message—" The man stopped talking, his nostrils attacked by the acrid gray
gas.
The three of them
heeled around, trying to retreat.
Illya slammed the
door and stepped out in front of it.
The bellhop fell to
the carpeting, gagging.
One of the men
turned all the way around, swinging his gun, blinded by the gas. Illya waited
until he was faced away from him, then clipped him across the neck.
Solo struck the
other in the belly, and when he folded forward, he chopped him across the back
of his neck. The two men hit the carpeting at almost the same time as their
guns did.
Yvonne stood rigid
against the wall. Above the plastic nose cone, her eyes were wide.
Illya scooped up one
of the guns, Solo the other. Leading Yvonne by the elbow, Solo opened the door
and thrust her into the corridor. He and Illya moved beside her, fingers on the
triggers of the guns.
The corridor
appeared empty.
Wild-eyed, Yvonne
kept the cone covering her face, though Illya and Solo had removed theirs.
With Solo leading
the way and Illya guarding their rear, they ran along the hall to the elevator
bank. Solo pressed a button.
The elevator
appeared almost at once. The doors slid open. Solo, Illya and Yvonne retreated
as if executing a ballet step. Two armed thugs moved forward from the elevator.
"Sorry,"
Illya said, "we've changed our mind."
He tossed a gas
pellet into the cage as Solo slapped at the down button.
A thug raised his
gun to fire as the doors slid closed on him. Down the elevator glided. For a
moment they could hear the thugs coughing and yelling for help.
They turned, running
again.
Solo pushed open the
stairway door. They went through it.
They paused beside
the up-and-down flights.
"You go
up," Solo said. "We'll go down. That way, part of us have a chance of
getting out of here."
Illya gave them a
jaunty salute and bounded up the stairs.
Holding Yvonne's
elbow tightly, Solo moved them toward the down stairwell.
Yvonne cried out and
staggered against him.
Solo got no more
than a glimpse of the two men at the landing below them. He swung around,
dragging Yvonne after him. They ran up the stairs.
Illya paused,
waiting, staring down at them. "What's wrong?"
"We decided to
go with you," Solo said.
"That's too
bad, because I'd just decided to go with you," Illya said. He jerked his
head upward. "Gun boys—two flights up."
Solo nodded toward
the exit; "Go out on this floor."
Illya nodded. He
held the door open. They heard men running down the stairs and up them. They
ran out into the corridor. They turned toward the elevators, but at this moment
one of them opened and two men ran out, guns drawn.
Illya fired
instinctively. The two men ducked back into the elevator cage.
Solo dragged Yvonne
after him. They ran toward the end of the corridor.
"It's six
floors straight down that way," Illya warned.
"You got any
better ideas?" Solo panted across his shoulder.
"I'm with
you," Illya said. He turned, firing again to discourage the gunmen from
leaving the elevator.
The stairway door
opened, then closed.
Doors along the
corridor were thrown open. Women screamed and men yelled, demanding to know
what was going on.
Illya laughed,
pleased. The more crowded the corridor, the safer they were.
Solo thrust up the
window, swung his legs through. Illya opened his mouth to yell until he saw the
metal rails of a fire-escape.
He followed Yvonne
through the window to the fire-escape landing. He slammed the window closed.
Solo took a step downward, but bullets struck the metal railings near him,
singing.
"High-powered
rifle!" Illya gasped.
Solo turned, pushing
Yvonne ahead of him.
"Where
to?" Illya said.
"Up," Solo
said, as bullets whistled past them. "Where else?"
They clambered up
the old iron fire-escape to the seventh floor.
Illya reached for
the window to open it when he saw two men running along the seventh floor
corridor with guns drawn.
Illya, spent, sagged
back against Yvonne.
"Up
again," he said.
They climbed
swiftly. Below, they heard screaming. The streets teemed with people, stirring
like ants in a broken nest.
Illya paused, gazing
down. "They watching us get knocked off?"
Solo shook his head,
still climbing. "No. It' a run on the banks. rioting against the
government. THRUSH has got the world in a panic."
"It's doing a
fair job on me," Illya said.
Bullets whistled
past them, the sound of gunfire nearer.
Yvonne whimpered,
pointing to the floors below, where armed men clambered through windows. They
paused only to fire.
Illya spoke gently
to Yvonne. "Don't be scared. Bullets lose their thrust fired up at this
angle. At least that's what they told me in ballistics. Hope they knew what
they were talking about. Is that really true, Napoleon?"
Solo did not answer.
He was already over the wall on the hotel roof. Yvonne struggled. Illya helped
her over the parapet before he saw what had struck Solo dumb.
Illya stared. Parked
on the roof were two of the smallest, reddest helicopters he had ever seen,
their blades churning as if they were idling, waiting.
He glanced below.
The armed men poured upward on the metal ladders. Shrugging, Illya climbed the
wall and stood beside Solo.
Two men in brown
zippered flight suits stood near the small helicopters, holding their
high-powered rifles negligently.
Illya stared at the
impassive faces. There was no doubting they were THRUSH hirelings, as were the
gunmen still racing up the fire-escape ladder.
"This is where
they were chasing us the whole time," Illya said in disgust.
Solo nodded. He
glanced at Yvonne. "You can take that nose-cone away from your face now,
Yvonne."
"It doesn't
matter," she said. "I'm not breathing anyway."
THREE
THE FLIGHT-SUITED
men motioned them politely into the small helicopters. They were most
gentlemanly, except that they gestured with guns.
When Solo and Yvonne
were in one helicopter, the pilot pressed a button. The small seats compressed
tighter, locking them in and metal bands clicked together securely across their
chests and legs. Neither of them could move.
Led toward the other
helicopter, Illya suddenly swung around, lunging at the pilot.
The man side-stepped
almost boredly, and clubbed Illya with the butt of his rifle. Then he lifted
Illya as if he were a sack of potatoes and slung him into the rear of the
copter.
The helicopters
winged upward from the hotel roof like frightened pigeons.
Solo fought at the
metal bands, but he was bound helplessly. He found Yvonne in tears when he
glanced at her. He tried to think of some comforting words, but there were
none.
The city, the fabled
river, the dust-glinting trees whipped past be low them. The helicopter circled
on the outskirts of Paris, hovered above a chateau, hundreds of years old,
majestic and isolated within its own park.
Yvonne stared numbly
down ward through the plastic bubble. She gazed blankly at Solo.
Solo glanced down.
The turrets and roof of the chateau gleamed in the afternoon sunlight. Bright
cars by the dozens were sunning quietly in the drive.
The helicopter
dipped downward, angling in toward the lawn.
Yvonne shook her
head. "Why, that's M'sieur Caillou's own chateau!"
The pilot spoke
coldly. "That's right."
Yvonne's voice was
puzzled. "They're having a reception for the men and women of the
emergency international monetary meeting!"
"If I'd known
it was a party," Solo said, "I'd have worn a tux."
The pilot said,
"You two were not invited—to the party."
Solo stared at the
pilot incredulously. "Those are brilliant world leaders down there."
"So?"
"You think you
can put us down there and not attract their attention?"
"Their minds
are on more important matters," the pilot said calmly. "Banks are
closing all over the world." He shrugged. "Anyhow, we've been
delivering guests, just like this, all afternoon."
Solo did not speak.
The helicopter put down on its tricycle under carriage on the spacious lawn.
The second small chopper followed within seconds.
No one came out of
the house. Through French windows Solo saw formally attired people gathered in
worried knots, lost on the distressed tension in the afternoon.
The pilot pressed a
button and the seat and metal bands relaxed their tenacious grip on Solo and
Yvonne. The pilot left his rifle inside the chopper, but kept his hand on a
clearly outlined automatic in his flight-suit pocket.
"Get out, nice
and easy," he ordered.
Solo followed
Yvonne, jumping out to the ground. Across a short space the other pilot knelt
over Illya, passing an ammonia vial back and forth under his nose.
Illya resisted for a
moment, then revived suddenly and violently. He sprang upward as if catapulted,
carrying the pilot with him. The man yelled, going over on his back.
Illya closed his
hands on the pilot's throat and they toppled out of the copter hatch. They
struck the ground hard.
Illya did not
surrender his advantage. He chopped the pilot across the Adam's apple, drove
his extended hand into his solar plexus, and leaped up—in the face of the drawn
gun of the other pilot.
"Hold it,"
the pilot said, fixing his gun on Illya, but ready to wheel around on Solo.
Solo stood unmoving.
"Vengeance is a big thing with you, isn't it, Kuryakin?"
Illya stared at him
groggily. "Where were you?"
The pilot said,
"All right, you two. Grab that pilot. Help him up."
Solo shrugged. He
and Illya hefted the gagging pilot to his feet and they crossed the lawn toward
the side of the stone chateau. Frivolous music blared out from the windows,
somehow like a desecration.
"Hold it,"
the pilot with the gun said when they reached what appeared to be a solid wall
in the base of a high-rising turret.
Holding the
automatic on them, the pilot edged warily to the wall, shoved a lever concealed
in the stone. A door-sized opening was made as the stones slid into themselves
silently.
The pilot jerked his
head, ordering them inside.
When they were on
the landing at the head of wide stone steps leading to the depth of a silent
dungeon, the pilot pressed an inside lever and the wall closed.
"Down the
steps," he said.
They came off the
stairs into a vaguely lighted foyer, devoid of furniture. A man armed with a
rifle stood at each of the four walls. A door opened and Marie, Albert and
Gizelle emerged, none looking too healthy.
"Here they are,
Marie," the pilot
Marie reached out
and grasped a gun from the nearest guard.
"I'll kill them
now!" she said.
Solo and Illya
released the pilot and he struck the floor hard. Marie jerked the rifle up to
her shoulder.
A voice crackled
from a concealed speaker. It was Oriental in its inflections and quality,
cultured in tone: "Until I order it, Marie, you will kill no one."
Marie lowered the
rifle, but her face was livid.
"I want
them!" she answered defiantly. "Especially this Solo. I will deliver
his skin to you—in strips!"
The Oriental voice
remained at a conversational pitch, but chilled with its authority.
"Perhaps you will. In good time. Don't let hatred suspend your reason. We
do not need the notoriety of murder just now, my girl. Why else do you think we
brought them here, in stead of leaving their corpses at the hotel? In order to
indulge your violent whims? I need not remind you—I had better not have to
remind you again—that we walk on eggs until our plan is in operation. I'll tell
you when, my dear. Until then— remember—I see everything that goes on."
Marie exhaled
heavily, and thrust the gun out to the guard, who retrieved it silently.
The three prisoners
were prodded across the empty foyer to an empty dungeon.
A door creaked open.
"Inside,"
the guards said.
Yvonne pressed close
to Solo.
"What kind of a
place is this?" she whispered in terror.
"I know what it
looks like," Illya said. "It looks like something from an old Errol
Flynn movie."
PART THREE: INTERLUDE AT A FRENCH CHATEAU
SILENCE DRIPPED
oppressively in the thick-walled dungeon. There were no chairs, stools,
cots—not even straw upon the stone flooring.
A deeply inset
window, eight feet above the floor, shone with remote light. Making a stirrup
of his clasped hands. Illya boosted Solo, who then chinned himself up to the
sill and hung there, staring through the bars at a limited square of lawn and
drive.
Illya sank against a
wall, crossed his legs and closed his eyes.
Yvonne prowled the
room. She shook the door, struck the rough walls with her small fists.
She stared down at
Illya. Her voice quivered with outrage. "Why would M'sieur Caillou treat
me in this brutal manner? Why would he do this to you, his friends?"
Illya spoke gently.
"Don't fret about him."
"I've always
revered him. Now I hate him."
"Don't hate
M'sieur Caillou."
"Don't
you?"
Illya gazed up at
her. "I think, Yvonne, no matter where Lester Caillou is right now, it's a
worse spot than we're in."
Solo spoke from the
window, where he had supported himself on his elbows. His voice was strained
with effort. "The party's over—the guests are leaving."
Yvonne said
worriedly, "Is that good?"
Solo glanced down at
her. "It means that the Caillou on duty up there got away with it. It
means the good doctor, whoever he is, will have time for us now."
Sudden screaming of
sirens replaced the wail of inane music. Solo pulled himself closer to the
bars, clinging to them.
"Les
flics!" Yvonne cried. "The police! It is the police, isn't it?"
Solo stared through
the bars a moment, then let himself drop within the dungeon.
"Something's
fouled them up!" he said in triumph.
"Maybe it was
this," Illya said in mock casualness. He touched at an inch-long cylinder
pinned at his lapel.
Solo put his head
back, laughing in pleasure.
"You've been
broadcasting distress bleeps!"
Illya nodded.
"As fast as my little transistors would work." He smiled faintly.
"I don't like to sit around idle."
The thick dungeon
door was hurled open. Its brass knob gouged into the stone wall.
Albert, Marie and
three guards charged into the room like a task force.
Albert carried a
small machine pistol.
"All
right," Albert snapped the order. "You two. Solo, Kuryakin. Let's
go!"
Yvonne cried out.
"Don't leave me alone down here!"
Illya bounced to his
feet without touching his hands to the floor. Gently, he touched at her cheek
with the backs of his fingers. He smiled at her. "Don't worry. I've a
feeling we'll be back. Soon."
Albert laughed.
"Don't count on it."
Marie smiled, too.
"This time your cleverness has carried you too far."
TWO
A GUARD OPENED the
double doors of a room on the third floor of the chateau.
Solo and Illya
stepped into a room of incredible elegance. It left them for the moment
speechless.
The large,
high-ceilinged room was part of a suite done in an early Eastern dynasty decor,
featuring blood reds and ebony blacks.
In the center of
this luxury reclined a man of Siamese ancestry. Before him was a low, bone
white table.
He sat with his long
legs crossed. He wore a silk suit of deep black, a white shirt and white
cravat. His face was like ancient writing paper made of rice. It looked as if
it would tear or crack if touched. His cheek bones stood prominently and his
nose, hooked above a taut, small mouth. From deep sockets burned eyes black and
fiery. He was almost bald, his forehead high and protruding.
Across from him a
far wall was banked with large closed circuit television screens monitoring the
chateau. Upon one tube Yvonne huddled against the dungeon wall, shoulders
sagging, face pressed into her hands. Lights flickered gray when there was
movement in any area.
The Siamese slapped
his fragile hands. Albert and Marie withdrew reluctantly, but not daring to
protest aloud. They were followed by the guards.
The man waved his
slender fingers. Solo and Illya followed the direction of his gesture. They saw
the dark mouths of guns trained on them from every wall.
They returned their
gazes to the smile of the man at the bone-white table.
Illya glanced at
Solo, found his fellow agent peering incredulously at the seated man.
For one long moment
Solo's hazel eyes struck against the ebony black ones of the man before him.
The room was charged with the static tension generated between them in the
silence.
"Dr. Lee
Maunchaun," Solo whispered at last.
"Ah, yes. I am
the doctor you were anxious to meet."
"But—"
"I'm
dead?" Dr. Maunchaun inquired, smiling enigmatically. "A violent
death, wasn't it? The last time we met—"
"An atomic
misfire," Solo whispered.
"Obviously I
survived," Dr. Maunchaun said. "Without nurturing any deeper
affection for your people and their goals."
"You always
hated on a fantastic scale," Solo said, remembering.
"Perhaps you
thought you knew me when I hated. But I had barely learned its nuances at that
time, my old enemy." He stared through them at something in the middle
distance. "I was born to hatred. I saw my sisters slain because there was
not food for female children in my land. I saw starvation.
"I was the
youngest of ten surviving children, subsisting on a plot of ground barely
thirty square yards. People of my kind learn to live with hatred, or to die of
despair. I lived. I persisted. I bought myself—at prices you would never
understand—the wisdom of the ages, all the knowledge I would need to buy myself
away from the land I hated."
"Only to find
yourself meeting people you hated," Solo said it for him.
Dr. Maunchaun gazed
at him unblinking. "Ah, yes, we've met before, Mr. Solo. But your partner,
we've not met."
"Only in my nightmares,"
Illya said mildly.
"I'm sure you
learned to hate Mr. Kuryakin without needing to know him," Solo said in
irony.
Dr. Maunchaun waved
his reed-like hand imperiously, dispensing with the preliminaries. He said,
abruptly. "Which of you is doing it?"
They gazed at him
blankly, as if they did not know he meant the bleep-broadcast signals.
The doctor's voice
tautened. "I've been occupied this past hour or I would know unerringly
which of you is the culprit. It does not matter. You will suffer equally for
this crime."
They remained
silent, watching
Dr. Maunchaun gazed
at them a moment almost pityingly. Then he pressed a button on the table edge.
A scientist in white smock appeared from a side room almost immediately. He
carried an oblong sound-detector.
He walked close to
where Illya and Solo stood. He passed the oblong before them, its thin antennae
trembling.
He reached out,
removed the cylinder from Illya's lapel. The expression on his face did not
alter. He placed the small object on the table before the doctor.
Maunchaun looked at
it but did not touch it. "No doubt made in Japan," he said in
contempt.
"It upset your
laundry cart," Illya said.
Maunchaun met his
gaze for a moment, then shrugged his thin shoulders in his immaculate silk
jacket. He pressed another button. "I remind you, there are guns trained
on you from the walls."
Illya shrugged.
Maunchaun paused,
then as if making a decision, he nodded toward the white-smocked scientist.
The man set the
detector down.
From an inside
pocket he with drew two small vials. Then he placed goggles and an oxygen mask
over his face. He came slowly to Illya and Solo.
He broke the vials
with the pres sure of his thumb and extended them toward the faces, of the two
young agents.
There was no smoke,
nothing they could see, a faint acrid odor, this was all. The scientist
retreated. He removed his mask. He glanced toward Dr. Maunchaun and when he
nodded, the scientist withdrew from the room.
Illya and Solo could
not move, found they could not speak, though they remained conscious, aware of
everything around them.
"No sense
gambling with your foolhardy notions of courage," Dr. Maunchaun said.
He pressed another
button be fore him. Almost at once, the corridor opened and Lester Caillou
entered. Except that Illya saw this was not the real Caillou. This man, the
ringer they'd substituted for the internationally known banker, paused, wincing
slightly when he saw Illya.
"It's all
right," Maunchaun said to the ringer. "Everything is all right. These
are the agents who saved your life, some years ago in the Middle East. I'm sure
you won't forget them again."
"No," said
the false Caillou.
A knock at the door.
Maunchaun pressed a button, the doors parted. A servant entered.
"Lieutenant
David of the Paris Police, Doctor," he said.
The police
lieutenant entered, paused, momentarily stunned at the opulence of the suite.
Maunchaun nodded
almost imperceptibly at the false Caillou, and he spoke as if obeying a signal.
"Come in, Lieutenant." His voice was gracious, perfect in its
imitation of the real Caillou. "This is my house guest, Dr. Lee Maunchaun,
a psychiatrist, and a leading financial expert."
The police officer
bowed, awed. Dr. Maunchaun merely inclined his head, without speaking.
The lieutenant, a
slender, dark man, nervous and out of his depth, said, "We've been picking
up these signals. We traced them here to your chateau, M'sieur Caillou."
The false Caillou
nodded graciously and smiled. "It was only a short in our closed-circuit
television." He waved his hand with studied negligence toward the bank of
screens on the wall.
The police officer
stared in awe. "How ingenious."
"Yes," the
false Caillou said. "Protection against intrusion. As a matter of fact,
these two prowlers—" he inclined his head toward Solo and
Illya—"caused the short in the television sender."
"Prowlers?"
The lieutenant straightened. This he understood. "Shall I arrest them,
M'sieur Caillou?"
Caillou shook his
head. "We have our own secret police to handle these matters, Lieutenant.
A matter of security, you understand? We'll deal with them quietly. We have so
much panic just now because of these money matters all over the world—we want
no notoriety. You understand?"
Dr. Maunchaun
insisted upon presenting the lieutenant with a rare Oriental box, filled with
gold pieces, and then the police officer was gone. The police cars roared out
of the drive.
Maunchaun gazed up
at Illya and Solo in chilled triumph. Then he reached out, snapped the small
signal cylinder between his fingers.
He pressed a button.
When two guards entered, he ordered them to search the prisoners. The agents
watched all their identification removed.
The effects of the
colorless gas dissipated. Solo gazed at the false Caillou. "So you passed
another test, eh? You fooled all Caillou's friends and associates this
afternoon?"
Caillou merely
straightened, did not reply.
Dr. Maunchaun could
not resist boasting. He said, "Ah, no. Our friend here stayed discreetly
out of sighs. The real Lester Caillou himself entertained his friends, said
what we wished him to say, did what we wished him to do."
He smiled.
"After being so pleasantly and temporarily paralyzed as you were, surely
you find it easy to believe I can control the mind of a man like your old
friend Caillou? Ah, he was present—the precious, perfect host—present in body
at least. Only his mind has been kidnapped, Mr. Solo."
Solo stared silently
at the parchment face, the sharp-honed features, black eyes, not daring to
doubt any boast the doctor made.
Maunchaun smiled
faintly. "Perhaps it is vanity, Solo, the need to demonstrate that I, the
son of lowest peasants, have accomplished almost everything I set out to do. Or
maybe it is because you defeated me once, when we met earlier, thinking even you
left me for dead in an atomic misfire. I want you to see you have no hope of
stopping me this time. I shall control international finance—"
"You and
THRUSH," Illya said.
The enigmatic smile
widened slightly. It was almost as if the doctor said it aloud. He would cross
the THRUSH bridge when he reached it.
Maunchaun pressed a
button. He sank back then, sitting almost as if he were asleep, his eyes hooded
like a cobra's.
Presently the
corridor door opened. Marie entered, carrying a machine pistol. The real Lester
Caillou walked past her.
Solo stiffened,
watching him. It was Lester, all right, except that he moved in the strange
manner of a sleepwalker. He was correctly attired, his head tilted in that old
way he had, but his eyes were disturbingly empty.
Until this moment,
Solo had not seen how completely it was as Dr. Maunchaun said: Only Lester
Caillou's mind had been kidnapped.
"Stand there,
Lester," Maunchaun said. He inclined his narrow head toward where the fake
Caillou stood, identically dressed as the banker was.
Caillou smiled faintly,
nodded. He walked to where the ringer stood, paused beside him, watching
Maunchaun with a dog-like obedience in his face.
Solo shivered.
"Some of your
detractors feel you have made a gross error in forcing gold payments from free
world nations, Lester," Dr. Maunchaun said in that level tone which seemed
attuned especially for Caillou's hearing.
Caillou gave them a
faint superior smile and engaged in an obscure soliloquy on the reasons why
only gold could be accepted at the present, despite growing panic in the free
world countries. It was his first duty to protect the interests of the
international trade organizations against the spiraling inflation, the worth of
paper currency— Solo didn't even bother to listen.
He was certain that
leading financial experts had little argument that was persuasive against
Caillou. Maunchaun was not only a brilliant psychiatrist, he was the
outstanding financial expert of the far east.
He knew how to make
even outrageous falsity sound logical.
He was speaking now
through Caillou's brainwashed mind.
Solo said with a
certainty he did not feel, "The least whisper of what you have done to
this man—"
"Yes. The least
whisper," Maunchaun agreed. "But who is to broadcast that whisper?
You, Mr. Solo? Your accomplice in international capitalist crimes Kuryakin
there? Perhaps our old friend Lester Caillou?"
Solo flinched, did
not attempt to answer.
Maunchaun indulged a
small smile. "Caillou will continue to speak and perform in rote, what
ever I tell him to do, as long as I will it. This is deeper than hypnosis,
Solo. Deeper than any waking-sleep you can understand. A drug-induced hypnosis.
There are secrets of my poor land, Solo, older than your crude
civilization—"
Maunchaun stopped
speaking, as if bored with the mentalities of his auditors. He clapped his thin
hands and the real Lester Caillou was led away.
Maunchaun watched
his odd, somnambulistic gait until the door closed. Then he brought his chilled
smile back to Solo and Illya.
"And now what
shall we do about you gentlemen?"
"I don't
know," Solo said. "But I suggest you do it quickly."
Maunchaun waved his
hand. "Don't make threats, Solo. Do you mean that if United Network
Command doesn't hear regularly from you and Kuryakin, other agents will doom
us?"
Solo shrugged.
"That's part of
"I assure you
I've handled this contingency. Your reports are regularly going into your
headquarters in New York––glowing lies about your progress, which I can assure
you our old friend Alexander Waverly receives with relish."
Maunchaun pressed
another button. Albert and three armed guards entered. "Since we cannot
afford to kill them at the moment, I believe an hour in the sound chamber will
teach them the error of attempting to cross me with such childish toys as
bleep-signals."
Solo and Illya were
marched along the corridor, past rooms converted into chemistry labs. They were
shoved into a metal lined chamber twenty feet long, but less than nine feet
wide.
The metal was cool
to the touch. The room was bare of any furnishings. They found that the metal
was perforated from floor through ceiling. Faint sound began to flare through
the tiny perforations, already higher than a whistle, and steadily increasing in
intensity and rising in decibels.
Solo sagged first.
The sounds penetrating his ears were like lances. But when he toppled against
the wall, the sound on this side increased unbearably.
It was no better in
the center of the area. As they moved from the wall, sound intensity increased,
stalking them.
It was like some
brain-smashing force, relentless, without pity.
Suddenly the sounds
ceased, but the silence was unbearable. Solo felt as if his head were
expanding, as though his brain would burst.
Illya sank to his
knees, but then the sounds started again. They came upward through the
perforated flooring. At first they were welcome, now that their force seemed to
press inward upon their brains.
The intensity
increased, going beyond the range they could endure. It was like physical blows
slapping them about. They ran from one end of the room to the other, unable to
escape the unwavering intensity of the sound waves.
They pressed their
arms like shields against their heads, but the sounds would have penetrated
steel.
Then silence again.
They screamed against the pressures and expanding agonies of the silence. They
almost welcomed the increase of the sound waves.
Neither was
conscious at the end of the hour.
THREE
ILLYA REGAINED
consciousness first. He pressed his palms against the throb in his temples. It
was a headache beyond description—no hangover could ever approach it. But when
his hands touched the sides of his head, he screamed. His head was too sore to
touch.
Yvonne was kneeling
over him, her face constricted with pity.
"Oh, you poor
dears," she whispered. "What have they done to you?"
She extended her
hand toward his face. Illya rolled away from it, crying out in panic.
"Just don't touch me."
Movement jarred him
until he wavered a moment on the brink of unconsciousness. But he did not pass
out again. That would have been too easy.
After a long time,
Solo stirred. He sat up, his head bent forward loosely on his neck. As Illya
had been, Napoleon was unable to touch his temples or his cheeks. He throbbed
with pain from his neck up.
He lay still a long
time.
"Drug-induced hypnosis,"
he whispered. "Brainwash. So that's how he controls Caillou."
Illya stared at the
distant gray ceiling of the dungeon. "And there's nothing we can do to
help him—or the people who are going to be ruined in this game of money
manipulation."
Solo did not speak
for a long time. Illya thought maybe he had fainted, but it was too terrible an
effort to turn his head to see. When he moved even the slightest, he felt as if
his brain rattled inside his agonized skull.
The dungeon door
squealed open. Biting his mouth, Illya managed to keep from screaming against
the rusty sounds.
Marie entered,
accompanied by Albert and an armed guard. They came into Illya's line of
vision, or he would not have seen them. They wavered before him in some kind of
red haze.
"You.
Yvonne," Marie said. "Let's go."
Yvonne cried out,
protesting. She caught Illya's hand, pleadingly.
Illya winced in
agony. "I'm sorry we got you in this, Yvonne," he whispered.
She pressed his
hand.
"It's not your
fault," she said. "You are very brave, very good. Both of you. You
have done all you could."
"Not
quite," Illya whispered grimly between his teeth.
He lay there
helplessly and watched them lead Yvonne away. For a long time strange sounds
drifted into the dungeon through the high window, even through the walls. He
tried to think his way out, but thinking was as painful as a physical touch
inside his mind, and finally he sank into a troubled sleep.
Illya awakened in
the deepest darkness, feeling as if he were b ing battered by an earth tremor.
For some moments he did not know where he was. Then he felt the rough texture
of the dungeon floor, the late night chill, the touch of Solo's hand on his
shoulder, shaking him.
"What's the
matter?" Illya said. His head hurt less intensely now, though he was
painfully aware of movement.
"I've figured
it out," Solo said.
"You figured
what out?"
"The one
weakness in Maunchaun's scheme."
"You mean there
is one?" Illya's tone doubted it.
"There is one.
Drug-induced hypnosis. That's why they had to find Caillou's precise
double—that's why they had to bring in a ringer. That's why everything has to
go on exact schedule."
"Maybe it's
just my headache, but you've lost me somewhere."
"No. Don't you
see? There are no ill after-effects of ordinary hypnosis. It can even be
benefiting. But drug-induced. That's the key. Lester Caillou had to be prepared
for this drug-induced hypnosis. He had to be destroyed."
"You mean this
drug is killing him?" Illya sat up, headache forgotten.
"That's right.
They can induce hypnosis, or anything else they want with it, but enough of it
is fatal. Nobody knows that better than Maunchaun. They can control Caillou
just so long—so many weeks, or days, or hours. I don't know that. But you can bet
Maunchaun has it figured to the minute. Everything has got to go right for him
until the moment that Caillou falls dead from the effects of that poppy-seed
drug—or Maunchaun is lost."
"Looks like
he's got nothing to worry about," Illya said emptily.
"He would
have," Solo said. "If I could just get out of here. If could do
nothing else, I could upset his schedule. I might even save Lester's
life—"
"Or lose your
own."
"We're
expendable, Illya," Solo said. "I don't have to tell you that."
Illya tried to grin.
"No. You don't. And I sort of wish you wouldn't keep reminding me."
"Death's been
playing with me. It just missed me a few days ago in an Istanbul street. Maybe
this time it won't miss. I hate to sit here waiting for it."
Illya sighed
heavily. He crawled along the wall, and after a few moments returned with a
small packet.
"Maybe I can
help you," he whispered.
"What have you
got?"
"Friction-bomb
blasting pellets. THRUSH made. I took them off that pilot when we had to help
him from the midget copter."
Solo laughed
admiringly. "That's what they were looking for when they searched us up in
Maunchaun's room?"
"I think
so." Illya nodded. "I knew the TV cameras were on us when they threw
us in here, so when I found that crevice in the wall, I sat there and hid my
find."
Solo grinned warmly.
"I don't know what I'd do without you."
Illya smiled.
"I do. You'd sit here and nurse that king-sized headache."
Solo exhaled.
"Let's go."
Illya nodded.
"Which way?"
"Will one of
those pellets take out that door?"
"Probably. But
there are guns out there. If we timed it right, we could go out the window with
a better chance."
"I'm with
you."
Illya swung up on
Solo's shoulders. They walked toward the high window. Illya drew back his arm
and threw a friction bomb pellet at the window base.
He sprang from
Solo's shoulders then and both retreated swiftly to the wall farthest from the
window.
Everything happened
with instant suddenness. The bomb exploded outward, carrying the bars of the
window with it. While the explosive sound still reverberated inside their
heads, they raced across the room.
They moved then with
the grace and precision of circus acrobats. Illya flung himself against the
wall beneath the window on his knee. Making stirrups of his hands, he waited
until the toe of Solo shoe touched his palms. Then he sprang upward, levering
Solo into the opening.
Shouts and footsteps
rang in the corridors outside the dungeon. The chateau intercom crackled, and
then Dr. Maunchaun's voice rattled through it.
Neither Solo nor
Illya bothered to listen. They knew that they were on camera, but this no
longer mattered.
Solo went all the
way through the window. Then he turned, hooked his toe over the outer sill and
sprawled inward, reaching out his arms as far as they would go.
Inside the dungeon,
Illya stood on his toes, stretching his arms upward tautly.
Solo's hands struck
hard against his, fingers clasped around his wrists. Then Illya scrambled
upward, using his ties against the rough wall while Solo wriggled himself
through the window, drawing Illya after him.
The chateau grounds
were black in the dark hour before dawn. But as Illya and Solo sprang from the
wall shrubbery dozens of flood lights erupted from everywhere, blasting the
lawn with light.
They heard the
dungeon door thrown open as Illya wriggled free. Men shouted from the yard,
from parapets. Distantly dogs yowled. Somewhere in the darkness a gun fired. A
man swore, and the shooting ceased.
Solo and Illya
crouched in the concealment of the shrubbery. Solo pointed toward a car in the
drive. "Run for it!"
He did not wait to
see if Illya heard. Bent low, he sprinted to ward the drive. He took fifteen
giant steps and then sprawled face down in the grass at the precise moment guns
fired from the parapets.
He glanced over his
shoulder, crawling frantically in the grass. Illya was not with him.
Gunfire sounded and
bullets splatted into the sod around him. He had to keep moving.
Something flickered,
and from the corner of his eye he saw Illya racing toward one of the red midget
helicopters roosting on the lawn.
He came up on his
knee, ran, fell forward, rolled over, came up to his feet and threw himself in
against a Fiat as the rifles barked, snapping at his heels.
He rolled under the
car, the gravel biting into him. Armed men ran from the house. He heard Illya
yell, saw the men turn, racing toward the copters.
He reached up,
opened the door on the side away from the house. He pulled himself up into the
car, let the door close quietly.
There was no key in
the switch. He was not disappointed or even delayed, because he had not
expected one.
Using a strip of
metal, he reached under the dash, shorted the ignition, pressing the starter.
The little car shook itself, coming alive.
Solo already had the
car in gear before he pulled himself up under the steering wheel.
He saw men racing
from the house. They fired with their small arms, the bullets shattering
windows, embedding in the metal. The car lurched forward into the drive. He
stepped down hard on the gas.
Other and larger
cars were already in pursuit before he reached the opened gate and turned out
on the highway, headed toward Paris.
He could hear the
gunfire back there. But he felt empty, knowing they were no longer shooting at
him. They were shooting at Illya. And he knew something else. Illya had run
toward those parked copters in order to give him a chance of escape.
He glanced in the
rear-view mirror. Other cars came racing out of the driveway. They skidded
almost off the shoulders, righting them selves.
With a sense of
frustration, Solo pressed the accelerator to the floor. Ahead he saw the faint
lights of Paris.
He came around a
wide curve, banking. Car horns blared and he skidded past a truck. His pursuers
had to slow, and one of them went careening off the roadway.
Solo gripped the
wheel, silently begging five more miles of speed from the Fiat.
Checking his
rear-view mirror, he found the cars on his trail again.
He saw side roads
whirled past on the wind in transit, knowing that he could lose the larger cars
only by hitting these side roads.
It was too risky. He
saw a truck pulling out of a cross-road ahead.
Timing it exactly,
holding his breath, he whipped the little car to the left, directly in front of
the horrified driver.
He pressed down on
the gas going in front of the truck with only inches to spare.
As he'd hoped, the
truck driver panicked, stalled the truck. When he looked back, a crowd was
gathering in the avenue, but his pursuers were unable to get past.
By the time the
truck was moved, he had gained a precious mile on the men back there. As he
neared the market places of Paris, the traffic increased.
But they were back
there. He whipped around a corner, climbed a steep, cobbled hill, plunged
downward, horns yapping at him.
When he checked his
mirror, the larger cars were still trailing him.
He jerked the car
around a corner, slammed on the brakes. He was already out of it as it rolled
to stop in a no-parking zone.
He ran across the
walk, plunged into a kiosk, going downward, racing toward a slowing Metro on
the underground tracks.
FOUR
ILLYA SAW he was not
going to make it to the midget choppers.
Men with attack
hounds came running from beyond the small helicopters in the early morning.
Their shadows lunged in the flood lights, ravenous upon the grass.
Marksmen fired from
the chateau parapets.
Illya hit the ground,
rolling toward the sorry protection of a lilac bush. He lay a moment, panting
like a fox. Sounds battered inside his skull. He heard the yowling of the dogs,
the raging of men, the gunfire, the sound of cars coughing to life, racing on
the drive.
He grinned faintly,
knowing that Solo had made it that far at least.
He saw the dogs
running toward him. They were still beyond the copters. Other men came from the
driveway, and more from the veranda at the front of the chateau.
He made up his mind.
The nearest protection was the window in the dungeon. He had accomplished most
of his objective. He had caused enough diversion to enable Solo to get into a
car and off the grounds.
He came lithely up
to his knees. He faked toward the 'copters. When the gunmen wheeled their guns
that way, he reversed himself; crouching low, he raced back to the shrubbery at
the dungeon window.
He drew a long
breath and at the last possible moment dove the remaining few feet into the
shrubbery. He stuck his head into the blasted window space and almost bumped
heads with a startled guard on a ladder inside the dungeon.
In an instinctive
reflex action, Illya thrust out his hand in a stiff-arm motion, catching the
man under the chin. He shoved as hard as he could.
He was already
scrambling back into the shrubbery, scrambling through it along the wall.
The dogs were
nearer; the shouting of the men sounded as if they were in the hedge growth
with him. He freed a friction-bomb pellet, set himself and threw it with all
his strength at the window. More stones shattered and sprayed in fragments.
For the space of
three breaths, everything ceased on the yard.
Illya did not wait
to enjoy his small victory. He crawled as fast as he could on all fours along
the inside of the shrubbery.
Ahead were gunmen on
a small veranda. Setting himself, Illya tossed a small pellet. The explosion
rocked the yard, knocked the sentries off their feet.
Illya was over the
low wall almost before the debris settled.
He scooped up a gun
from the fallen sentry nearest him. The tattoo of gunfire from the yard and
from positions above him, sent him scrambling through a smashed window.
With a savage laugh,
he looked about, almost as if surprised to find himself back in the house.
The intercom
crackled. "Kuryakin! He's in the east wing sun room! Converge there at
once!" Maunchaun's voice lashed at Illya in triumph.
Illya jerked the gun
up. He shot the eye of the watching camera and then put a round into the
intercom. It was almost––but not quite–– as satisfactory as blasting the doctor
himself.
He heard steps
racing toward him along the corridors. He ran across the room, stepped through
the draperies.
He shoved open one
half of the casement window, let himself through.
The room was loud
with people. Illya pressed through the window, but a burst of gunfire from the
yard drove him back. From within the room, guns crackled. Glass smashed around
him and the draperies shivered under the impact of bullets.
Illya sprang out to
the soft ground outside the window. He lost his balance for a moment and lost
time setting himself. They continued firing down at him, keeping him in close
to the projecting stones of the walls.
As he turned, he saw
Albert leaning out of the window, rifle upraised like a club. For one second,
Illya stared up at him. He thought in agony, "Oh, no, not my head!"
As Albert brought
the gun-butt down, Illya fired upward. The bullet slashed across Albert's
cheek, driving him back a little.
Illya dropped his
gun, caught at the rifle in Albert's hands. Putting his feet against the stone
foundation, he lunged backward, drawing Albert through the window upon him.
This effectively
stopped the gun fire.
Illya wrenched the
gun from Albert's hands. He tossed it over his head. Albert's fist sank into
Illya's stomach, the breath driven from him.
For a moment, Illya
simply hung on while earth, sky, chateau and lawn switched places. He felt the
battering of Albert's fists. He gripped Albert's belt in both hands and levered
him upward. Then he shoved forward, driving Albert against the huge stones of
the chateau.
Albert cried out,
going limp. When Illya released him, the big Moor slid limply down the stones,
crumpling to the ground.
Illya looked about
wildly for one of the guns, but when his head came up, he saw Marie a few feet
from him. She stood in the window, something—a dart gun—in her mouth! He shook
his head at her, tried to fall away.
But then something
stung him in the neck, with the savagery of a wasp, but he knew it was not a
wasp. Instinctively, his hand clapped at his neck. But it never rose that high.
He felt as if his legs melted off at the knees below him. He was conscious of being
nauseated, sick at his stomach, and then he was diving from an incredible
distance down toward where Albert lay crumpled on the ground beside the house.
He did not re member making it.
FIVE
AT ELEVEN that
morning, Napoleon Solo, shaven, refreshed, wearing a faultless gray suit,
rearmed, entered the Paris banking district.
Helie strolled into
the Rothschild Building, went up in one of the elevators to the Caillou
Interests suite.
He entered the
reception room of the Caillou offices, and stopped, eyes widening, stunned.
Yvonne sat at her
desk, as if this day were like any other day at Caillou, International.
He was staggered to
see her here. He had last seen her when she was taken away, crying last night
from the dungeon. Looking at her, in a smart dress, an immaculate coiffure, you
could not believe that last night had happened to her, outside a nightmare.
She looked up at him
as if she had never seen him before.
"Yes, sir? May
I serve you?" she said to him in French.
Solo approached her
desk, studying her. "Yvonne, are you all right?"
"Of course,
M'sieur. Why should I not be all right?"
He flinched, seeing
that she was all right only in her brain-washed mind. She was moving in a
drug-induced state of euphoria.
Her pupils were like
pin-points. Her smile was too loose, and her eyes barely focused.
"What did you
wish, sir?" she asked again.
"I want to see
Monsieur Caillou," Solo said.
"Have you an
appointment? What is your name? I'll announce you."
"I'd rather you
didn't do that," he said. He caught her hand as she reached toward the
intercom switch. "Why don't we just walk in on him, Yvonne?"
"We couldn't do
that, sir." Her tone remained bright and warm—and mindless.
She was like a
robot.
He lifted her from
the chair, hand clasping her wrist.
"You're hurting
me, sir," she said in that smiling, empty voice.
He saw there was no
sense trying to reason with her. She had no memory of him, none of having been
prisoner in the dungeon.
He simply smiled
back at her, marched her across the inner office to the door marked M. Caillou, Private.
He did not knock.
The false Caillou swung around as Solo closed the door behind him and Yvonne.
Caillou leaped
toward the phone. But Solo said, "Don't do it, fellow." He showed him
the U.N.C.L.E. .38 Special.
Caillou winced,
straightened. "What do you want?"
"We'll start
with the easy questions," Solo said. "Who are you?"
"Why, he's
Monsieur Lester Caillou," Yvonne said, as if a tape had been activated
inside her by the question.
He sighed, seeing
that Yvonne had been programmed by Dr. Maunchaun to recognize this man as the
real Caillou under every condition. He ignored her.
He tilted the gun.
"I'm waiting, fellow. I tell you this. If I kill you now, Maunchaun's
little plan will fall apart. I can end it at any moment, simply by removing
you. You better think about that. No matter what they promised you, you won't
collect it with bullets in you."
The false Caillou
sank into a chair behind his desk. "My name is Jacques DuMont. I am
nobody. I was a race-track gambler from Marseilles. I was forced into this. It
is not from choice I do it. You will gain nothing by killing me."
"Unfortunately,
you're wrong. Still, I hope I don't have to."
DuMont shivered. His
face revealed his sickness. "What do you want of me?"
"Quite a bit,
I'm afraid. We'll begin by having you call for your car. You are to tell your
chauffeur to meet you at the building entrance. But if you say one word more
than this, it will be your last."
He held the gun near
DuMont's face while the impostor made the call to the building garage. He re
placed the phone, his hand shaking.
"Let's
go."
DuMont got his hat.
Solo said, "I
warn you. I have filed the firing mechanism of my gun so that even anything
that disturbs me will cause it to fire. Even if I am killed, you also are dead.
You'd better concentrate on keeping me alive."
They went through
the outer offices. DuMont spoke to no one, looked neither left nor right.
Yvonne accompanied them.
They entered one of
the elevators, descended to the street. At the door, Solo checked, seeing the
Rolls Royce in the loading area. He also saw the men lounging along the
building, aware that they were THRUSH gunmen.
"You will cross
the walk, get in the car," Solo told DuMont and Yvonne. "Walk
naturally. Remember that my gun is fixed on you. You lose, no matter what
happens."
DuMont nodded. The
chauffeur got out of the car, came around and opened its rear door as Yvonne
and the false banker crossed the walk under the canopy.
Solo waited until
the chauffeur closed the door and started around the car again. He stepped out
of the door, angled across the walk. He moved along the car behind the
chauffeur, timing it so that his gun touched his back as he opened the door.
"Get in and
drive as I tell you," Solo ordered. He got into the rear of the car. The
driver moved the car out into the traffic. He spoke into the communicator.
"Where do you
wish to go?"
Solo spoke grimly.
"The Chateau Caillou, driver."
DuMont and the
chauffeur stared at him as if he were crazy. Solo shrugged. Perhaps they were
right.
PART FOUR: INCIDENT OF THE EIFFEL TOWER
A MILE FROM the
Caillou chateau, Napoleon Solo ordered the driver to turn the car off the
highway. They pulled into a copse of trees in the hammock below the huge old
estate.
Solo secured the
driver with ropes, and left him gagged on the rear floor of the Rolls. Walking
behind Yvonne and Jacques, he entered the grounds through a wooden door in the
stone wall.
They came up behind
the servants' quarters, moved past the garage. At the wall of the house, Solo
found the lever which opened a sliding door.
They stepped into
the stairway, leading down.
They reached the
foot of the steps in the basement foyer before the alarms wailed through the
ancient castle.
Maunchaun's voice
crackled on the inter-com. When Albert and the guards ran out on the level
above them, Solo did not even move his gun from Jacques' spine. Maunchaun
ordered: "Shoot him. I do not care why he came back here. I shall no
longer tolerate his meddling!"
Solo said nothing,
but Jacques DuMont screamed in the terror that had been building inside him on
the long ride out from the city. "Wait!"
Guns were already
raised, sighted on Solo. Yvonne continued to stand near them, robot-like,
unmoved by anything that happened around her.
"Wait!"
DuMont yelled again. "A hair-trigger. Even if he is shot, I shall be
killed. Wait!"
The men with the
guns hesitated.
Solo spoke in a
conversational tone. "I hope you heard that, Dr. Maunchaun."
There was a pause.
The intercom crackled vibrantly.
At last Maunchaun
spoke. "If you kill DuMont, I shall be forced to use the real Caillou. It
will not be as easy, but it will still succeed."
"You know
better, Maunchaun," Solo said. "It's all over. You know that. It has
been, since I got out of here this morning. United Network Command has a full
report. They are waiting at a medical center now to receive Lester Caillou—the
real Caillou."
"And you expect
to walk in here and simply walk out with him unharmed?"
"I haven't
given you any terms," Solo said. "I came back for Illya Kuryakin and
Lester Caillou. When you bring them here, I will tell you what your chances are
to get out of this alive."
Maunchaun laughed.
After a moment a guard brought Lester down the steps. At the sight of the real
Caillou, Yvonne whimpered gently, looking from him to DuMont––puzzled, the
terrors starting in her again.
From the dungeon, a
guard led Illya.
Solo winced, seeing
his partner. Illya's face was battered and bruised from the beatings inflicted
upon him since dawn. He dragged his feet when he walked. His wrists were linked
in handcuffs chained to a band about his waist.
Maunchaun laughed
again. "You do not look very large, or very awesome on my television
screen, Mr. Solo."
Solo continued
staring at Illya's swollen face. He did not answer. Involuntarily he jabbed the
mouth of his gun into DuMont's spine. The impostor screamed.
"Do you think I
am going to let you live, Solo?" Maunchaun's Voice persisted. "You,
or Caillou—any of you? If as you suggest you have destroyed my plan to use the
World Bank as an instrument of world panic, what have I to gain by permitting
you to live to testify against me?"
"You've one
gamble, Doctor," Solo said. "You know how long Lester Caillou will
live on this drug you've been feeding him."
"Indeed I
do."
"I'm willing to
gamble with you," Solo said. "I'll exchange DuMont for the real
Lester. Caillou, if you let us out of here."
"Why should
I?"
"There is a
chance Caillou won't live to get to the medical center. There is a chance he
won't recover sufficiently to testify against you. That's your only
chance."
"And all I have
to do is to allow you four people safe conduct from this house?"
"I've bad news
for you, Doctor. If we are not out of here in—" Solo checked his watch,
"—in thirty more minutes, operatives from United Network Command and the
French police will move in here. We're giving you thirty minutes, because if this
matter can be settled without further notoriety further panic can be avoided. I
thought you'd be interested in thirty minutes. A man like you should be able to
do many things in thirty minutes."
There was that
pause, vibrant in the silence. Finally, Maunchaun said, almost pleasantly,
"Let them go. All guards, let them go."
Holding Lester
Caillou's arm, Solo retreated. Yvonne moved be side Illya. They went up the
steps, through the door in the wall to the yard.
Solo was not
deceived that Maunchaun had surrendered so docilely.
The safest plan for
Maunchaun would be to permit them to leave, to clear out of the chateau in his
midget copters before the world fell in on him.
By now Solo knew
that Maunchaun was not interested in safety. His imagination moved through vast
spaces, and peril was part of his existence.
He said, "The
'copters. Walk at an angle as if we were going past them toward the gate. At my
signal, run to the nearest one."
They walked across
the lawn in the sun. Nothing stirred inside the chateau or out of it. Not even
a bird whistled in the trees. There was no breeze. It was as if everything held
its breath, waiting for Dr. Maunchaun's next move.
Solo felt as if he
were wearing a large target in the middle of his back. Maunchaun was not going
to let them get Caillou to the waiting physicians—not going to let them live,
even though his gigantic fiscal plot had been destroyed.
"Now!"
Solo said.
They ran toward the
nearest chopper. Caillou staggered.
Fearful, Solo
glanced at him. He slipped his arm around him, supporting him. Ahead of them,
Yvonne and Illya scrambled into the copter.
Solo half lifted
Caillou. He crawled into the bucket seat at the controls. Illya managed to
reach his manacled arms out and close the plastic door.
Solo started the
engine, revving the motor. Men ran from the house, through the doors, the
grounds filling with them. They carried guns.
Solo engaged the
controls; the blades whirled. The small whirly bird swung upward like a frantic
swan.
Solo tossed Illya
the handcuff keys he'd taken from Marie in that side-street hotel. Illya
unlocked the cuffs, let them dangle at his waist. He checked the 'copter, found
a machine pistol, a box of friction-bomb pellets.
Caillou sagged
silently against a bulkhead.
Yvonne shivered,
staring at Caillou. Shock and fear were at battle with the effects of the drugs
inside her.
Solo stared
downward. The men on the lawn outside the chateau looked like ants. They stood
unmoving on the grass staring upward.
No one made any move
to pursue them.
"This was too
easy," Solo said aloud.
The speaker on the
helicopter radio crackled. "I wondered when this would occur to you, Mr.
Solo," Maunchaun's voice taunted.
"I thought
maybe you were truly intelligent, Doctor," Solo answered.
"I am
intelligent, Solo. It is you who is naïve. Do you think I can let any of you
live?"
"I think you
can now. It's over."
"Oh, no, Mr.
Solo. With you and the real Caillou aboard the chopper, it has really just
begun. After all, Mr. Solo, world domination is at stake here. Could I afford
to be outwitted by Napoleon Solo?"
"You're wasting
your last thirty minutes, Doctor," Solo reminded him.
"Don't worry
about my thirty minutes, Mr. Solo. Worry about yours. Look around you. Secure?
Or do you finally se that I have the four of you exactly where I want
you?"
"I feel pretty
good."
"Mr. Solo,
think about it. If you were to die now––the four of you––could I not have
Jacque DuMont assume Caillou's identity? Could he not agree with all the
articles in your report to your agency? Could we not all regret the death of
the two agents of U.N.C.L.E. and the false Caillou?
"After all,
Solo, my plan is deep into fruition––many international bankers agree with my
theories––as advance through the brainwashed Monsieur Caillou. Do you begin to
understand?"
Suddenly the midget
helicopter vibrated from bow to stern. Yvonne screamed. Only Caillou, sprawled
on the small floor space, did not react.
Solo fought the
controls. Nothing happened.
The copter veered
abruptly, flying upward at a furious burst of speed.
It continued in a
roll, going all the way over.
Solo worked the foot
levers, the hand controls. The small plane trembled, finally righting itself,
but not through anything Solo was able to do.
"Do you begin
to understand?" Maunchaun's voice taunted. "You are on radio control
now, Solo. That is another wonderful feature of our midget birds. They can be
flown without pilots. I am this moment directing your flight… As you have been
every moment in these past days, you are completely at my mercy."
Solo did not answer.
He looked around the small cockpit.
Maunchaun's voice
taunted, "Looking for parachutes, Mr. Solo?"
Illya lifted the two
packs silently.
"Only two of
them?" Maunchaun's voice was filled with mock concern. "Will only two
of you be able to leap from the copter, Solo? Who will be saved? Caillou? Will
he live long enough to get to earth? And if he does, long enough to get to medical
aid? The secretary? You? Kuryakin?"
The midget
helicopter held a steady course, now that Dr. Maunchaun had demonstrated his
complete mastery of it.
Ahead, Solo saw the
buildings of Paris, near and yet impossibly removed, as if on another planet.
He abandoned any
attempt to control the chopper.
The radio speaker
crackled. "Do you see the Eiffel Tower ahead, Solo?" Maunchaun's
taunting voice inquired.
"I see
"I have
electronically set your helicopter on a collision course with the upper stories
of the tower, Solo. The course is locked. It cannot be altered. I need no
longer concern myself with you or your fate. The copter will be
smashed—friction-bomb pellets are aboard, will demolish further the ship and
you people. You will be destroyed beyond any hope of identification by any
chemical or other scientific means. Good bye, Mr. Solo. You waged a persistent
battle."
Yvonne was pressed
against Illya's shoulder. Her body shook.
Solo said.
"Yvonne."
She turned, seeing
he held one of the chute packs ready to harness it upon her.
"Oh, no,"
she whispered. "It does not matter about me. I am nobody."
"I got you in
this," Solo said. "I'm getting you out of it. Now. Hurry! We've got
no time to argue about it."
Her head tilted. She
stared beyond his shoulder at the Eiffel Tower taking black shape directly
ahead in the distance, seeming to hurtle toward them on its collision course.
She looked at
Illya's battered face, at Lester slumped beside her, at Solo. Finally, her eyes
brimming with tears, she nodded.
Solo harnessed the
chute on Yvonne. He pushed open the door of the copter. She hung a moment on
the brink. Then she hurtled outward, plunging downward.
Solo and Illya
stared after her a moment as she careened over and over in space. Suddenly the
lines of her chute streamed outward on the wind, the striped nylon whipped in
the wind. Her skirts and the chute filled with air, and she went floating,
sails and skirts like bright balloons in the sunlight.
The radio speaker
crackled. "Solo? Are you still there, or have you abandoned the ship like
a good little rat?"
"I'm
here," Solo said.
"Why don't you
jump? What's left, Solo? One chute? For three? You have little time left to
choose the one worthy to live." Maunchaun's voice dripped sarcasm.
"It will be a fearful, fiery death. You might live for some moments after
the copter strikes the girders of the tower. I don't envy you your death,
Solo."
Solo said nothing.
He slipped his arms
through the shoulder straps of the chute. He nodded at Illya, who worked
swiftly with him, tightening until he was securely harnessed in it.
"Minutes left
to you now, Solo." Maunchaun taunted.
Solo didn't even
bother listening any more. He reached out, took the handcuffs chain-linked to
the metal band at Illya's waist. He clicked one handcuff about Lester Caillou,
the other to his own wrist. He secured his hand to the re1ease clip of the
chute, thrust open the copter door.
"Hang on,"
he said.
Caillou and Illya
clasped their arms about him. For one moment Solo stared at the huge black
tower erupting through the trees toward them.
Below, the town
stirred, aware of the small machine bearing toward the tower.
Solo thrust outward,
leaping into the air, jerking on the ripcord at that instant.
As they leaped,
Illya threw the handful of friction-bomb pellets with all his strength against
the instrument panel.
For one moment
longer the small plane held its unwavering course directly toward the upper
reaches of the Eiffel Tower. Then it erupted in mid-air, fragmenting in blooms
and plumes of fire. The parts of the plane flew wildly, like bright pinwheels.
The chute opened,
jerking hard against the weight of the three men. It puffed tense and filled
with air, staggered aimlessly across the atmosphere, dancing, bobbling, and
finally righting itself, plummeting downward.
Solo heard Illya's
relieved laughter. Then he heard Caillou laugh, too, and his heart leaped
because he knew for the first time that Caillou would make it––to the waiting
doctors and to full recovery.
They had won.
Solo heard more wild
laughter, and realized, almost with a sense of shock, that the laughing was his
own. It poured out of him.
They rocked
earthward, laughing in triumph and the sheer wonder of being alive.
On the concourse
below, an incredible crowd was gathering form, coming from everywhere,
converging beneath them. Staring down, they saw that most of them were
tourists, with cameras clicking.