Teetering on the brink of consciousness, Illya thought one word wildly---Liar!
Count Lugo Beladrac knew full well what Elisabeth’s mission was in Rome. Illya was convinced of it now. And just as obviously Elisabeth couldn’t properly interpret what had just happened because of her weakened condition.
From the rear seat drifted an intermingling of voices, Beladrac’s urging her to put her head down on his shoulder and rest, Elisabeth’s drowsily protesting that she couldn’t fathom why Illya Kuryakin would be pursuing the count’s car, would be trying to start a fight with the count, or why the count had taken Illya along---
“But, my dear,” the count said softly, “we couldn’t leave him lying there, could we?”
“N---no, I suppose not. But what will you---“
“Drop him off at a hotel, naturally. Find him a room where he can sleep it off. Then we’ll be free to go about our own affairs, you and I.” Beladrac’s voice dropped lower, whispering words which sounded sickeningly, cloyingly affectionate.
But Illya knew he couldn’t stay awake much longer. It was a fight, just lying there half paralyzed, trying to stay awake and listen. Plainly Elisabeth didn’t know about Count Beladrac’s connection with THRUSH.
Still, she was not as yet completely under the influence of THRUSH’s newest drug. Illya heard her protesting softly again. “Lugo darling, these are friends of mine, Napoleon and Illya, wouldn’t attack anyone because of jealousy. It isn’t like them.
“You mustn’t trouble your head about it, my dear.”
“Is Illya awake? Let me talk to him, Lugo.”
Desperately Illya tried to make a sound. His throat felt clogged, wooden. The chauffer moved his left boot over so that it was resting on Illya’s temple, pressing his head to the mat much harder than was necessary.
The chauffer said, “The foreigner is sleeping, signorina.”
“I just can’t think quite right,” came Elisabeth’s plaintive voice. “These past few weeks I don’t know what’s come over me. If I could only concentrate---Lugo, perhaps Illya’s sick. Perhaps he really needs help. Should we get him to a doctor?” Her breathing was labored. Long pauses punctuated each few words she spoke.
You’re the one who needs help, Elisabeth, Illya’s mind screamed silently.
Elisabeth’s voice faded away to a sleepy protest. The motor of the Rolls-Royce hummed whisper-quiet. Illya lost track of time.
Perhaps he’d been out for a few seconds. Or several minutes. At any rate, he caught a fragment of the chauffer’s sentence: “---shall I proceed as we’re going, Excellence?”
“Naturally not, you cabbage. And not so loud! The girl has dropped off. Wretched little fool, to think I could be seriously interested in her. These Americans have such terrible egos. When they join U.N.C.L.E., it becomes far worse. Well, we shall prick their little bubble soon enough. Take the next turn-around. Phone the airfield to have the plane ready. We’ll take off immediately for Nice. We can carry that U.N.C.L.E. agent in the baggage space. We’ll keep him out of sight from Signorina d’Angelo. Of course our story will be that we delivered him to his hotel. Are you quite clear on that?”
“Perfectly, Excellence.”
All this Illya Kuryakin half heard, lying with his cheek against the ridged matting on the floor of the front seat. The convulsions began again. His fingertips turned cold, seemed to be full of tiny needles. The humming of the Rolls motor increased to a piercing whine. Illya knew it was all in his head. Solo’s face flashed into his thoughts.
Was Napoleon dead? Had the lethal gas that squirted from the camera of the bogus tourist finished him? Illya hoped desperately that it wasn’t so. Napoleon remained the only hope now.
He tried to move one last time. Consuming weariness overcame him. The struggle against the injection became too much. Somewhere far away he heard Count Beladrac humming a cheerful Italian folk-melody.
The car swung in a long curve, heading back the way it had come.
TWO
Napoleon Solo was just about half alive. At least he felt that way.
Dawn was just breaking as the taxi deposited him in front of the luxurious Hotel Penti in downtown Rome. Solo’s whole frame shook with an annoying ague. It had been with him ever since he awakened around midnight in the charity ward where he had been taken by the police. They had dragged him off the tarmac at the airfield and into an ambulance.
At least that was the way it was explained to him. He had no recollection of anything until he woke in a clean bed with a hellish ache in his midsection---his stomach had been pumped repeatedly---and the ague shaking him from end to end.
He spent the rest of the night alternately receiving injections and oral medications from a team of doctors and arguing with a rotund, mustached inspector of the metropolitan police who turned up at his bedside around one.
Fortunately Solo still had his identification with him, and his pocket communicator. The inspector spoke, in uncertain English, with Mr. Alexander Waverly in New York. Mr. Waverly vouched for Solo. The chief of Policy and Operations was circumspect, however. He told the inspector nothing of Solo’s assignment, only that he must be given all necessary medical attention and released as quickly as possible.
This galled the policeman. But a phone call moments later from the inspector’s superior, whom Waverly had also contacted, silenced his protests effectively. Solo was spared the burden of answering questions, though he did ask the inspector a few.
“And in your condition,” said one of the physicians, “it is imperative that you rest for at least three days, signor.”
“Send a nurse for my clothes,” Solo countered. “I’ve got to get out of here.”
“But that is impossible! In addition, it is potential suicide!”
“Where are my clothes?”
“You cannot!” insisted the doctor. “The after-effects of that particular gas are extremely debilitating, and could result in loss of---“
“Never mind.”
Solo stuck his legs out of bed. He stood up. He nearly pitched forward on his face. Cold sweat popped out all over his cheeks as he took a lurching step. “I’ll find my things myself.”
With practically the entire staff of the hospital washing their hands of further responsibility, Napoleon Solo teetered out into the light of false dawn. The waiting taxi deposited him in front of the Penti.
The hotel’s glass high-rise front caught the first shafts of sunlight from the east. The doorman, elegant in gold braid and a peaked cap, studiously studied his shoe tips and permitted Solo to open the main door himself. With his clothes a mess and his beard sprouting, Solo hardly fit in with the clientele to whom the Penti catered---film stars, magnates, diplomats.
Solo crossed the lobby, teeth chattering from the chill. He thought about Illya Kuryakin. He wondered what happened to him.
And Elisabeth and Beladrac, where had they gone? Elisabeth was due to register here at the Penti, where the Mid-Eastern Peace Conference was being held. Solo approached a clerk in fawn-gray morning coat who stood behind the registration desk.
He asked for the room number of Laszlo Prentiss. With some reluctance, but obviously unwilling to argue with the glare in Solo’s eyes, the clerk told him.
Moments later, Solo pounded on the door of a room on the eighth floor. “Prentiss? Open up.”
“Hullo? What? Who is it? Oh, hang on: I’m coming.”
The door was opened by a gangling, yawning fellow with a lantern jaw and untidy mop of red hair going gray at the temples. The man scratched his belly under his pajamas, blinked.
“Napoleon! We’d given you up for lost. What the devil happened to you?”
Solo thrust past the gangling man into the dim room. “If you’ve got any brandy I’ll tell you.”
Laszlo Prentiss was one of Section II operatives assigned to the U.N.C.L.E. station in Rome. He shut and bolted the door, flicked on a desk lamp. Solo, meantime, had already spotted the cognac and was pouring a healthy glassful from
the heavy decanter.
He sloshed it down. Ordinarily he was against operatives drinking heavily while on assignment. It dulled the mind and often made the difference between the correct, instantaneous response to danger and the wrong delayed one. This morning, though, with the after-effects of the noxious gas seething through his system, he needed something to keep him from falling over on his face. The whole affair was crumbling apart. The smell of disaster was ripe in his nostrils.
Laszlo Prentiss stood with hands in the pocket of his bathrobe as Solo sketched in some of the details of what was happening. Solo didn’t spell out the exact nature of the latest THRUSH threat. The fewer field operatives who knew about the possibility of massive drug-induced treachery in the ranks, the better. He did intimate that THRUSH was hatching a potentially disastrous scheme to gain control of the organization, and that Elisabeth was one of the possible guinea pigs for the operation.
Prentiss clicked his tongue at this. “Don’t know a thing about that, old chap. I was merely assigned to look after her once she got here. I checked into the Penti last Monday, when the conference began. Then, around dinner time last evening, Waverly called in on Channel F. He was cryptic. Said you and Kuryakin were on the way. That we should extend every cooperation, etcetera. I stayed awake half the night awaiting a phone call, either from Elisabeth checking in, or from you and Illya. When neither came, I fell asleep. You don’t know where Illya is?”
“Haven’t the faintest,” Solo replied, his forced lightness hiding his painfully deep concern.
“Well, Miss d’Angelo isn’t in the hotel either.”
Solo’s eyebrows shot up. “Where is she?”
“When she didn’t show up according to schedule, I got my little network helpers working. A few thousand lire grease the informational skids quite nicely y’know. Miss d’Angelo telephoned the hotel early last evening. Actually, a man relayed her message. She was leaving Rome for the weekend. Would return and claim her room early Monday morning, when the conference resumes.”
Now Solo’s belly tightened up. “Resumes? It’s broken off?”
“Afraid so. Late yesterday. THRUSH has worked its dirty work well. Even those gents at the conference table---cooler types than you’ll find in either of the two capitols of the two countries involved---are convinced that the delegates from the other side are a pack of charlatans and liars.
“The conference has been foundering for almost a week. Tempers getting short. Yesterday it turned into a real screaming match. Threats of war out in the open. The chairman banged his gavel as soon as I got to him with the news that our uncle was sending an agent with material to prove that all of the trouble has been fermented by THRUSH. The chairman got the delegates to adjourn until Monday morning. It’s a very touchy situation. If Miss d’Angelo doesn’t show up with the proper information, I’m afraid everything from the Sudan to Suez is going to blow.”
Holding the empty tumbler in his hands, Solo paced the thick carpet. “And Elisabeth has gone off somewhere. Been taken, probably. By that damn ugly count.”
“Beladrac!” said Prentiss. “You mentioned him before. The sports car driver?”
Solo gave a tight nod. “Rich. Ugly as sin. And probably a top THRUSH agent.”
A low whistle from Prentiss. “That last part I didn’t know.”
“Well, there’s a lot I don’t know, Laszlo, and some I can’t tell you. I do know this. If Elisabeth is with the count, it’s not because he gives a hang about her, though she’s going around saying they’re engaged. And the last I saw of Illya at the airport, he was chasing them.”
He went on to fill in more of the details of the attack at the field, including Beladrac’s use of his heavy gold filigree lighter as an apparent communications device to summon help. “Now the question is,” Solo finished, “where the devil has the count gone?”
Prentiss thought a moment. “Let’s see. He’s all over the social pages week after week. I’m sure he has a villa on the Riviera. Saw a picture spread on it recently. Posh place. And wasn’t there something written up about sports car trials in Monte Carlo this weekend? I’ll check.”
Prentiss streaked for the phone. Moments later he put the receiver back on its prongs.
“One of our fellows is going to look into it right now. He’ll phone back as soon as he can. Meantime, how about a shower and some breakfast? Room service should be open. I say, you really do look like the proverbial walking corpse. Are you going to make it?”
“I’ll make it, Laszlo. I’ve got to. Where’s the shower?”
Three
Shortly Prentiss’ associate telephoned back. Prentiss stuck his head around the bathroom door jamb and yelled at Solo in the steaming shower cabinet.
“Our dear friend the playboy count has a private aircraft which he keeps at the airport. It took off shortly past midnight. The flight plan he filed listed Nice as the destination. There were three passengers, the chauffer-pilot, the count himself, and a Miss Andrews.”
“I’ll get a plane,” Solo bawled back over the hiss of the water.
“Bit of difficulty there, old chap. My associate says the airport is swarming with well-known THRUSH agents.”
“Then there isn’t much doubt any more that Beladrac is running the operation.”
“No,” said Prentiss, scratching his chin. “I suppose there isn’t. Funny, that. A playboy who fools around motor cars and women. I suppose it is a top notch cover. This one must be something big if he hasn’t surface until now.”
You don’t know how big, Solo thought as the hot water needles drove against his skin. He felt a little better. A good substantial breakfast had helped reduce the nausea and pain.
At nine-thirty in the morning a delivery van arrived at the Rome airport with a medium-sized crate marked for a pet shop in Nice. The crate was perforated wit air holes. Without incident, the crate was loaded into the freight blister of the mid-morning flight for the Riviera.
Napoleon Solo rode uncomfortably to Nice inside the wooden box which had effectively hoodwinked the THRUSH agents watching the Rome terminal. If things hadn’t been so serious, Solo would have barked once or twice in the box for the sake of realism.
FOUR
Clink-Clank
Plink-zenk-spang
Hammer, hammer, hammer
Illya Kuryakin listened to the unusual noises as he floated back to consciousness. It sounded as though hand tools were being used to straighten out a piece of sheet metal, and to adjust reluctantly rusty belts.
Against the background of these tool noises, men conversed. At least three, perhaps more. Illya thought he recognized the voice of Count Beladrac among them. Catching phrases in French and Italian, Illya translated a word here and there.
Magneto.
Supercharger.
Tachometer.
And something about an auto-control. The interchanges sounded oddly professional and cheery.
The last thing Illya remembered was falling into the hands of THRUSH at the Rome airport. How, then, had it come to pass that he was hearing talk which more appropriately belonged in an auto race maintenance pit? Where---
A chilling burst of memory filled in the blurred edges of the mental picture. In addition to being a THRUSH agent of high rank, Count Beladrac drove grand prix cars.
“Ssssssh!” someone hissed near at hand. Then, in French: “Excellence, he’s waking up.”
“So he is,” Beladrac’s voice responded. “Guilliame, make certain those ropes are secure.”
Illya’s arms were stretched around his back, lashed together at the wrists behind the upright portion of an old wooden chair in which he sat. He opened his eyes. Light blazed in his face. The smell of oil and gasoline drifted into his nostrils.
Tied hand and foot to the chair, Illya was a prisoner in what appeared to be a large auto garage. The walls were lined with parts cabinets and workbenches equipped with sophisticated metal-working tools. Directly ahead of him, Illya saw three gleaming bullet-shaped
Formula One driving machines.
The one nearest to him looked the most dilapidated of the lot. Its metal bonnet displayed several deep dents. A mechanic in a greasy coverall was busy stringing wires from holes in the bonnet back to the driver’s cockpit. Another mechanic was working on the lug nuts of the right rear tire with an air wrench.
This car, a metallic blue, was one Illya recognized as an exceedingly fast American-powered Shelley-Python. Beyond it stood a red Ashworth-Marti. The third car was a blazing yellow Ferrante. Those two were covered with large clear plastic sheets. Only the near vehicle, the Shelley-Python, was being worked on.
The mechanics paused in their work. All of them turned to stare at him. None of them seemed unusually hostile, merely curious, but Illya noted a pistol butt sticking from one man’s pocket.
A shadow fell across his knees. Count Beladrac stepped around from behind, towering up against the tin-shaded bulbs which hung from the garage ceiling. The count wore a spotless white coverall. He was smoking a cigarette of gold-wrapped paper in a long ivory holder. As he smiled, his hideous face again displayed that amazing amount of dental ware.
“Good evening, Kuryakin. Glad to see you’ve come around.”
Illya glowered. “I’m not so certain I’m glad. How much of that stuff did you shoot into me?”
“Three doses,” Beladrac flicked ash away. “Actually you have been unconscious for nearly twenty-four hours. I thought it more prudent to keep you quiet. We’re in the cellar of my home, you see.” A gesture at the ceiling. “Just a few miles from Nice. Elisabeth is upstairs at the moment. She’s changing for dinner. She doesn’t know you’re here. I prefer to keep it that way. As soon as my associates have rigged the car and you’re off on your little ride, I’ll join Elisabeth and she won’t be the wiser.
The count bent forward and waved the hot tip of the cigarette beneath Illya’s nose. “I would be delighted to have her know and appreciate the fact of your death. On the other hand, I mustn’t let personal wishes stand in the way of the entire operation. I must settle for knowing that you are being finished off. Perhaps one day I’ll tell her how it happened.”
The Ugly Man Affair Page 5
