Man From U.N.C.L.E. 23 The Finger in the Sky Affair[UK]

by Peter Leslie

  Larsen lurched forward, retching for breath, as Illya slammed a left to the pit of his stomach. The dark man doubled up. As his head sank down, Kuryakin grasped hold of the ears and brought his knee sharply up to connect sickeningly with Larsen’s face.

  The THRUSH man sagged, the two agents catching his inert body and easing it into a chair before it could hit the floor.

  ‘A pity,’ Kuryakin said as they lowered themselves down the ladder. ‘I dislike violence…’

  Outside the door where the rest of the gang were talking on the floor below, they waited to listen. The Trident was due in four minutes.

  ‘Our timing had better be good on this,’ Solo whispered. ‘We’ve got to give the stuff time to work – and still be in there ready to catch them before they fall!’ He produced from a shoulder holster a gun with a long, thin barrel no thicker than a pencil and poked it carefully through the keyhole. Flipping open a cover on the single chamber, he slid in a fragile glass capsule about half the length of a cigarette, closed the cover and pulled the trigger.

  There was a faint snap as the powerful spring propelled the capsule into the room on the other side of the door. Illya looked at the luminous face of his watch, waiting while twenty-five seconds ticked away. The intonation of the voices in the room altered, becoming slurred and thick.

  ‘Now!’ the Russian called, twisting the handle and throwing open the door.

  Holding their breath, the two agents moved quietly and quickly into the room. The shattered fragments of the capsule lay on the tile floor just below a table spread with cards. Two large men were on their feet, swaying drunkenly from side to side. Solo caught one just as he was about to crash face downwards across the table; Illya seized the other in the act of hauling a gun from his hip pocket, and waited the few seconds needed before the nerve gas completed its action. Then, together, they lowered the unconscious men to the floor and hurried back to the landing.

  ‘Forty seconds,’ Kuryakin gasped, dragging the air gratefully back into his lungs. ‘Anyone that says he can hold his breath for two minutes must be crazy!’

  ‘You can say that again,’ Solo panted. ‘But what about the woman: she wasn’t there.’

  The Russian laid a hand on his arm. From two storeys below came the sound of a cistern emptying. A door closed.

  Footsteps sounded on the stairs.

  Solo and Illya melted back to the floor above and slipped through the open door of the bathroom. The footsteps traversed the landing they had just left and climbed the stairs towards them. In a moment, the woman Celeste appeared, walked along the passageway, opened the door of the operations room opposite, and went in.

  A moment later, with Illya close behind him, Solo reopened the door and stepped quietly into the room.

  It was a strange sight that met their eyes. Workbenches packed with electronic equipment ran the length of the two side walls. Indicator lights, dials and knurled control knobs studded a panel fronting a complex of valves and intricate wiring; from a curved tube of glass spiralling around a metal core, heavy-insulation leads coiled in every direction. On one side, lights gleamed from the complications of a powerful transmitter.

  At the far end of the room, the picture window stood wide to the warm night. In the centre of it, the tawny gold of Helga Grossbreitner’s hair was burnished by the light from a red bulb overhead. She sat behind a battery of equipment mounted on a heavy tripod and pointing out of the window towards the sea. Basically, this consisted of a four-foot-long centre section resembling a triple gun barrel, with a square box covered in switches and leads at the operating end and an attachment rather like a magnified camera lens with a long hood at the far end. Immediately above this device was a smaller three-barrelled affair – the three tubes like a trio of telescopes of unequal length. Into the slimmest of these, obviously some kind of aiming sight, the girl was squinting as she turned a wheel aligning the two sets of equipment. At one side, the greenish luminance of a radar screen showed a moving blip representing the plane whose actual landing lights they could see through the window as it flew low over the sea towards the airport.

  Celeste stood behind, gazing out across the dark countryside.

  There was a muttered word of satisfaction from Helga. A hairline on the radar screen was coinciding with the nose of the moving blip. Her left hand threw a heavy master switch on the control box. A deep humming mingled with electrical crackles filled the room. One of the barrels glowed red.

  Solo stepped swiftly forwards, reached over her shoulder, and twirled the wheel, canting the six barrels skywards.

  ‘A three-way laser with a ruby rod range-finder allied to conventional radar – very ingenious, Helga,’ he said softly.

  The girl spun round in her chair, her eyes flashing fire. ‘Solo!’ she exclaimed furiously. ‘You! But you were supposed to be—’

  ‘On the plane you were about to bring down. I know – but we thought we’d let this be the one that got away. Too many people have died already, my dear. You’ve had a long enough run as it is.’

  As the blonde sprang to her feet, her beautiful face a mask of rage, the silenced gun in Illya’s hand spat flame. Before the cork-like plop of the explosion had died away, Celeste pitched forward and clattered to the floor, one hand still grasping the butt of the tiny automatic she had been trying to pull from the top of her stocking.

  ‘It’s all right – it’s only a sleep dart,’ Kuryakin rapped. ‘Now…move away from that laser and put your hands up, quick!’

  The girl moved like lightning. Spinning the three big barrels to put a different one in place between the two ends of the equipment, she swung the whole apparatus round on the tripod so that the business end was pointing into the room.

  ‘Down!’ Illya yelled, hurling himself to the floor as the invisible beam swept over his head. Solo dropped like a stone and rolled under one of the benches.

  There was a brilliant blue flash as the revolving equipment came to rest and the beam stayed on the big transmitter. Smoke poured from the bench and the radio chassis, the plaster of the wall crumbled, and an instant later the whole side of the room was a mass of flame as the wooden laths behind caught fire.

  Helga Grossbreitner leaped over Illya’s prone figure, dodged round the beam and ran for the door. As Kuryakin took a snap shot at her and missed, he saw in the light of the flames a small alcove to one side of the door. On a wheeled operating table in the recess, lashed to the chromium rails of the trolley and gagged with insulating tape, lay the almost naked unconscious figure of Sheridan Rogers.

  ‘Sherry!’ Illya shouted. ‘Get her out of there, Napoleon. I’ll look after the woman…’ He struggled to his feet, bent double to run under the laser beam and made for the doorway through which Helga had vanished.

  Before he was half way across the room, there was a low rumbling and armoured steel shutters dropped heavily down to blank off both door and window…

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  ALL THE FUN OF THE FAIR

  ILLYA launched himself at the doorway and beat upon the smooth metal curtain – but the armoured shutter ran tightly in steel channels and would not move. Behind him, Solo ran the wheeled operating table out of the alcove and away from the flames, wrestling with the thin cords binding Sherry Rogers to the frame. The fierce flare of light emphasized the hollows of her supple body, sculpturing the contours.

  Choking in the smoke which was now filling the room, Kuryakin was back at the laser. Throwing off the master switch, he wheeled the apparatus round to point at the steel curtained door. ‘If the barrel in position is a ruby rod laser,’ he gasped, ‘it should be able to cut through that shutter – providing it’s not more than three eighths of an inch thick…Stand back, Napoleon: we’ll have a go!’

  He flicked the switch back to the ‘on’ position. Immediately, there was a blinding flash of crimson light and a shower of sparks from the metal surface walling them in. In less than a second, the concentrated energy of the laser beam had punched a hole
in the steel. Shepherding the long barrels up and around by means of the control wheel, Illya slowly carved with the beam an irregular circle about two feet in diameter. In the confined space, the heat of the blazing wall, the roar of the flames and the acrid attack of the smoke were almost unbearable. The two agents were bathed in sweat by the time Kuryakin had completed the circle and the roundel of steel inside it fell outwards with a dull clang.

  ‘You go after her, Illya,’ Solo yelled. ‘I’ll get these birds out of here if I can and join you later.’ As Kuryakin dived head first through the ragged hole in the shutter, he was dragging the unconscious figures of Celeste and Sherry towards the door.

  On the landing, Illya paused to drag a few gulps of cold air deep into his tortured lungs. Which way had Helga Grossbreitner gone? Up or down?

  For a second, he paused, irresolute. Then a faint draft from the open trapdoor in the ceiling decided him. He sprang for the ladder and climbed rapidly to the attics.

  Wisps of smoke curled from the landing walls and the wooden floor of the rooms under the roof was already ablaze. Lifting his feet high to avoid the flames, the Russian dashed past the figure of Larsen, still slumped in the chair where they had left him, and jumped on to the grey steel console Solo had seen from the roof. Above his head, the skylight yawned open to the sky.

  Reaching up, Illya grasped the edge and hauled himself to the tiles.

  Helga Grossbreitner was three roofs away, poised on the edge of a six-foot gap where an alley ran between two houses. She was wearing knee-high boots, skin-tight black leather pants and a white shirt – and her ripe figure was silhouetted against a strange orange glow which suffused the sky beyond the far end of the village.

  As Illya hastened crabwise after her across the tiled slopes, dodging chimney stacks and television aerials and water tanks, the glow deepened to scarlet and then began to flicker as great clouds of smoke bellied across the skyline. The firework display was over and the symbolic reconstruction of the sack of St. Paul by the Saracens had begun.

  The girl hesitated a moment longer and then gathered herself and jumped the gap. She landed awkwardly, lost her footing, fell, and slid almost to the guttering before her desperately scrabbling hands found enough leverage among the curved tiles to arrest her progress.

  Catfooted, the Russian raced across the roofs to close the gap between them. The girl must have heard his hurrying footsteps as she struggled to her feet, for she paused, looked back over her shoulder, and then raised her right arm in his direction. An orange flower bloomed suddenly from her hand. Illya ducked back behind a chimney, listening to the simultaneous crack of the explosion and the shrill whine of the bullet as it hit a coping and ricocheted away into the night.

  After a second, he peered cautiously around the brickwork. Helga was just disappearing over the edge of the roof on to a fire escape.

  He set off again at a run, taking the space over the alleyway in his stride, almost losing his balance as he landed, and then, righting himself, dashing on to the far end of the roof and the fire escape. As he looked over, there was a flash and a crack from below. A bullet spanged off the iron staircase just below the level of the roof.

  Having waited a moment, he raised his head and gazed over the parapet again. The sky over the rooftops was a deep crimson now, a menacing glare reflected fitfully from the dense clouds of smoke billowing from the ramparts. In the blood-red light he located Helga standing at the foot of the fire escape – and once more flame blossomed twice from the gun in her hand. He drew back, looked over again, and for the third time a bullet sent him scurrying back into cover like a tortoise into its shell. Obviously the girl was prepared to keep him tied down there.

  His own gun, loaded with sleep darts, was useless at this range. He would have to try and outflank the girl. Worming his way back, he inched down to the guttering at the side of the house. The wall was covered thickly with the branches of an ancient vine.

  Groping about in the leaves until he found the main stem, he seized hold of the gnarled wood, swung his legs over the gutter, and began to lower himself, hand over hand, slowly to the ground four storeys below. Dust, insects and small twigs showered upon his head and threatened to choke him as he descended, but at last his exploring toe discovered firm ground and he found himself in a small walled garden.

  Skirting an ornamental pond, he pushed through a rank of dwarf cypresses, stepped up on to a garden roller and straddled the six-foot wall. On the far side was a small cobbled square. The tight, shining hemispheres of Helga Grossbreitner’s leather-clad rump were just disappearing through an archway opposite.

  Illya looked back and up along the roofline of the houses he had just left. From the upper windows of the THRUSH headquarters, flames and smoke were streaming. As he watched, a shower of sparks burst through the skylight, and a moment later a column of fire exploded into the night and licked hungrily at the sky. He wondered if Solo had managed to get the women safely out of the burning building, shrugged, and dropped quietly to the ground.

  Through the archway, a flight of stone stairs led down between tall, narrow buildings to a street.

  In the nightmare light he hurried down, flattened himself against a wall, and peered round the comer of the building. The street was obviously one of the village’s main thoroughfares for, although it was only about eight feet wide, he could see in the reflected red glow of the floodlights a succession of antique shops, boutiques, souvenir kiosks and galleries crammed with chocolate-box paintings. As far as he could see, it was empty – but from the far side of a rise in the roadway came the clatter of running feet.

  Illya dashed up the slope and paused at the top. From here, the street dipped down again between rows of gimmicky ‘restored’ houses and then forked – one leg curving away to the right to join the ramparts, the other plunging down to a tunnel-like mediaeval gateway leading to the outside world. For the first time, too, there were people: several residents were climbing the hill towards him on the way back to their houses, and there was quite a crowd among the café tables on the battlement above the gate. Helga was running. A strand of her golden hair had worked loose from the chignon and streamed over her shoulder as she pelted down the incline and vanished through the arched gateway.

  As Kuryakin set off after her, he realized that the display must now be over. The red floodlights were out, the smoke was blowing away, and from outside the walls of the town a swelling murmur of applause from thousands of sightseers posted along the terraced vineyards and orange groves grew and grew. There was another sound too, he realized as he ran down the slope towards the gate – nearer and more urgent: the sound of many voices calling, laughing, shouting in a confused babble just beyond the ancient walls.

  A moment later, he burst out from the vaulted tunnel into a scene of extraordinary gaiety. A Provençal fair filled the small place outside the gate usually reserved for the parking of cars and games of pétanque. Booths, kiosks and sideshows jammed the spaces between the buttresses of the old rampart, sprawled across the open space under the plane trees and spilled over into the narrow roadway between La Résidence and La Colombe d’Or, St. Paul’s world famous hotels. Around and between them seethed a vast throng of people hurling coconuts, buying tickets, pitching quoits, munching candyfloss and ice cream, and packing the counters of shooting galleries in flickering torchlight.

  But of Helga Grossbreitner there was no sign.

  Illya clattered to a halt at the edge of the crowd, scanning the myriad faces with an exasperated frown. Trying to locate a blonde in black trousers and a white shirt among such a press of holidaymakers was hopeless.

  He was about to plunge into the maelstrom when there was a shout above and behind him. Solo and Sherry Rogers were climbing down a stone stairway from the top of the rampart. They presented an arresting sight: the Chief Enforcement Officer of U.N.C.L.E. was soot-streaked and dishevelled, his collar tom and his jacket split; and the girl looked almost comically ill-dressed in a skirt and blouse
several sizes too large for her.

  ‘Where is she?’ Solo panted as they came up to Kuryakin. ‘Not among that lot, I hope?’

  The Russian nodded unhappily. ‘She kept me at bay with an automatic,’ he said. ‘And by the time I’d made a detour to outflank her, she was just that little bit too far ahead…You made out all right at the house?’

  ‘Yes. It was a bit of a struggle, but we made it. I got Sherry and Celeste out first and then went back for the doorkeeper you slugged. The two plug-uglies we put to sleep had already come to and hopped it.’

  ‘And Larsen?’

  Solo looked at the ground. ‘Pity about him,’ he said soberly. ‘But he was at least a quadruple murderer. By the time I’d tied up Celeste and the doorkeeper, called up Station M to ask for the Sûreté boys to come and pick them up, and borrowed some of Celeste’s clothes for Sherry, the top two storeys were a wall of fire…’

  He looked back at the battlements. Above the irregular line of roofs, the sky flickered orange in imitation of the display which had so recently finished. Faintly above the hubbub of the crowd, they heard from the far side of the village the hee-haw bray of a fire engine.

  ‘Never mind,’ Illya said. ‘I suppose we had better plunge in among all this and try to find her. We’d better split up…’

  Slowly, they forged in among the chattering, laughing crowd, swollen to saturation point now by an ever-growing stream of sightseers flooding down the narrow approach road from the terraces surrounding the town. They were jostled, pushed, shouldered aside, jammed inextricably in phalanxes of people between the booths, as the strident cries of barkers and the good-natured chaff of tourists in a dozen languages swelled and crashed around them. At one point, when Illya had stopped by a sideshow where people bought a handful of numbered tickets rolled into tubes in the hope of winning a raffle prize, Sheridan Rogers approached him and plucked at his sleeve.