18 - The Unfair Fare Affair (18 page)

Bartoluzzi was running noiselessly toward it over the carpet of pine needles almost before the echoes of the crash had died away among the sighing of the branches.

He crawled into the space beneath the battered mesh covering and tried to haul Kuryakin into the open air. There was a bruise on the unconscious Russian's temple, but otherwise he seemed to be undamaged. He was handcuffed to the militiaman on each side of him, however, and the wiry little Corsican was unable to drag all three of them out together. He felt in the pockets of the soldiers and then examined those of the dead sergeant in the cab. There were no keys to be found.

With a grimace of exasperation, he loped off through the trees to the place where he had hidden the Dodge. Five minutes later he was back by the crashed truck with a surgeon's saw in his hand.

Once his gruesome task was completed, he pulled Kuryakin clear and carried him—alone now but with an empty handcuff dangling from each wrist—back to his own vehicle. Dumping him in the back, he covered him with a pile of old sacks. The gas from the grenade would keep him quiet for at least another hour.

There was one more thing to do. Bartoluzzi did not know how much, if anything, the Russian had said to his guards. But he could not afford to take chances. It was possible that he had spilled the whole story in an attempt to establish his real identity. And even if they hadn't believed him, a fragment of the truth might stick.

The Corsican slid a clip of ammunition into an automatic pistol and went back to the scene of the crash.

Six more shots sent the birds wheeling.

Shortly afterward he was on a side road heading south into the forest with the briefcase full of money, which he had recovered from the Wartburg's cab, on the seat beside him.

Chapter 16

A Murder Is Planned

ILLYA KURYAKIN blinked his way awake. It took some time for his mind to clear, and the blurred images revolving slowly in front of his eyes meant nothing to him at first.

Then, portion by portion, the jigsaw assembled itself—the long wait in the Prague attic... the succession of decrepit vehicles in which he had been ferried half across Europe… the tramp through the snow and the crossing of frontiers... Bartoluzzi's face when the tell-tale streaks of dye told him that Illya wasn't Kurim Cernic... the journey with the soldiers and the sudden realization that the face of the truck driver whose ancient vehicle was passing them was the face of the Corsican...

And the recognition of the innocent-looking plastic grenade full of nerve gas the Corsican had tossed so neatly into the back of the riot truck as he passed.

Kuryakin jerked fully awake. Bartoluzzi was standing in front of him making circular movements with his hands before the Russian's eyes. "So," he said softly, "monsieur Impostor has recovered his senses. So much the better. Bartoluzzi will be able to find out the truth that much more quickly—and then he will be able to deal with the man who has dared to thwart his plans!"

His lips curled back from his teeth, and his eyes flashed venomously as he spat out the last words.

Kuryakin involuntarily flinched back from the fury in his voice. Or at least he tried to. But he found out as soon as he moved that he was far more of a prisoner than he had been in the truck. He was sitting in a stoutly built rustic oak chair. His wrists were wired to the arms, his knees and ankles were wired to the front legs, and there was a wide luggage strap passing across his chest and behind the chair back, which was buckled so tightly that he found it difficult to breathe freely.

Speaking of the truck... his eyes went once more to his own wrists. In front of the electric cord binding each to the arm of the chair, the metal hoop of a handcuff still encircled the flesh. But the companion cuff attached to each by a short length of chain was now empty; the guards were gone.

Yet the steel bracelets that had attached them to Illya remained closed and locked—and there were rust-colored stains splashed across the bright metal and over each of the sleeves of his jacket.

The Russian's eyes widened. "My God!" he cried involuntarily. "Those guards! How did you get the cuffs off them without unlocking them? You didn't...?"

"How do you think I got them off?" the little man snarled. "You think maybe I went for a locksmith or something?"

"You took off their... you... while they were unconscious... But that's monstrous! That's just what happened to the warder in Denmark. How could you do such a thing?"

"It won't make much difference to them now."

"You mean you killed them? You murdered unconscious men in cold blood?"

"It was the only way I could
stop
the bleeding," the Corsican said with a coarse laugh. "You might almost say I killed them in hot blood!"

"And you can joke about it? You're… you're nothing but barbarous."

"We shall see just how barbarous Bartoluzzi can be in a minute," the little man said. "I suppose it's useless asking you who you really are, why you have come snooping into my private affairs, or who sent you?"

"Quite useless."

"As I thought. I can tell a professional when I see one. It would save me a great deal of time—and you a great deal of pain—if you could do the same. For I mean to get that information, and I don't care how I do It. Also I am in a hurry, so that my methods must necessarily be somewhat— er—crude."

"And supposing I was to give you this information—what happens to me then?"

"I shall kill you," Bartoluzzi said simply. "You must pay the price of the knowledge you have gained by your spying. You know too much for the safety of my organization."

"If you are going to kill me anyway, why should I talk then?"

"To save yourself great suffering before you die."

"I have nothing to tell you."

"Very well. We shall see." Bartoluzzi sighed heavily and went out.

Left alone, Illya looked desperately around the room. It was a strange place. There were another chair like the one to which he was bound, a huge refectory table slanted across one corner, a roll-top desk littered with paper—and that was all. The rest of the dusty boards, from the hooded cheminée to the gothic embrasure on the far side of the room, were bare. Through the mullioned window, he could see the façade of another wing of the building—a turreted, spired, and battlemented expanse of hewn stone that looked like a castle in a fairy story.

Except that, unlike the fairytale mountains that humped themselves up above flower-strewn fields in story books, the peaks and spurs and bluffs beyond this stronghold were composed of towering heaps of scrap iron that raised rusty fingers at the winter sky. And the horizon all around was formed by the forbidding skyline of the forest.

The Russian looked closer at hand. The tying of his bonds had been an expert job—he could neither reach them with his fingers nor detect the least sign of resilience when he flexed his muscles against them. And there was nothing nearby that could be of any help. At one end of the table, the empty briefcase lay beside two piles of money—one that he had given to Bartoluzzi when he got out of the furniture van, the other that he had been keeping until he got to Zurich... and that had been sent back to the Czech authorities by the German police.

At the other end of the table the remains of a delicatessen-type meal lay in cartons and squares of greaseproof paper. But there was nothing, not a knife or a fork or any thing that could be used as a tool, within sight.

Footsteps echoed in a flagged passageway somewhere out side the door. The Corsican was coming back.

A moment later he was in the room, carrying a small piece of machinery in a cast iron housing, two lengths of high-tension cable, a six inch crank handle, and half a dozen bulldog clips.

"A magneto," he said proudly, laying the housing on the table with a heavy thump. "A twenty-four volt Bosch from an old dump truck out there. The paras in North Africa used to say there was nothing like them for making people volunteer information!... And it's nice that we can provide it from stock, as it were. I always knew this junkyard would come in useful one day!"

He laid the rest of his equipment down by the magneto and walked across to Kuryakin's chair. "And now, friend, we will see how sweetly Bartoluzzi can make you sing," he said softly.

Reaching forward, he seized the Russian's shirt and ripped it open from neck to waist in a single powerful gesture.

Napoleon Solo pulled the DS into a parking area in response to a signal from the slender arm projecting from the window of the mustard-colored Fiat in front.

The girl was standing by his door before the Citroën had stopped. "I think we'd better have a little council of war here," she said. "It's getting light, and we may not have the opportunity later on. Also, I think it might be better if I went on alone. You could wait for me in some secluded place."

"I should love to wait for you in some secluded place," Solo said. "But in this case, it's just out of the question. This is my show. It may be dangerous. I couldn't possibly allow you to do anything alone. Now that your ex-boyfriend has tumbled to the fact that my friend's not what he says he is, he'll be on his guard and doubly dangerous."

The girl laughed bitterly. "You don't realize what that man has done to me," she said. "He has made me break the law, risk prison many times. And he is not just my ex-boyfriend. We were going to get married... I heard so many times about the piece of land under the olive tree, the sound of the sea, the hot Mediterranean sun... and… and now... "

For a moment her voice faltered, and then she went on. "I do what I do because I want to. Because I must for my own self-respect. So you see, Mr. Solo, it's not a case of whether or not you permit me to take part. I'm going on to his place anyway; it's just a question of whether you come with me or wait here!"

Solo grinned. "If it's like that, we'd better go together."

"As you wish. We are between Wurzburg and Bamberg. The East German frontier is only about an hour's drive away. You are an American—do you think they will let you cross?"

"I may be an American citizen, but I work for an organization that is supranational. I have papers to prove I work for U.N.C.L.E.—and we are welcomed in the East as much as in the West, fortunately."

"Your papers will get you through right away?"

"Not as quickly as if I had a special permit or a visa. They'll probably have to phone their headquarters to check that it's okay to let me through. But it shouldn't take too long, I guess."

"I, on the other hand, am well-known. I can pass straight through. Do you not think, as your friend may be in great danger, that it would be best if I went ahead as I suggested? Then, when I have seen how things are at Bart's place, I can come back to you and we will decide what to do."

"Yes, but you may find yourself in great danger yourself."

"Do not worry. I know the paths and tracks of that forest like the back of my hand. Also the place where he lives. I can move secretly there and listen, where it would be impossible for two. Nobody will see me, I promise."

Solo sighed, "Okay. Seems I have very little choice—and it's too true that every minute counts if we're to rescue Illya. But you don't have to come back to me, not physically. Remember the little baton radio we heard my friend on, outside the restaurant?"

"But yes. It was most convenient."

"I have another. If I show you how to use it, you can take it with you—and then you can simply call me when you have found out what is happening. After that, you can give me directions and I will come to you. We shall save time that way. And also we can keep tabs on your... on Bartoluzzi. If you don't mind staying there until I arrive, that is."

"For this purpose," Annike said grimly, "it will be a pleasure."

Illya Kuryakin was unconscious, slumped forward against the retaining strap with his blond head hanging, when the clatter of the helicopter's rotors broke the silence in the big room.

Bartoluzzi dropped the magneto on the table. Leaving the leads still clipped in position, he ran to the stairs leading to the open air.

From the outside, his retreat presented an even more surrealistic aspect. It had originally been built as a shooting lodge for a Dresden businessman—a kind of Gothic Folly, with turrets and battlements pretentiously hiding what was in fact quite a small house—and it had always looked curiously unreal set in its forest hollow. But surrounded by a turbulent sea of scrap iron as it was now, the place became immediately a creation of the wildest fantasy.

Over a groundswell of bedsteads, cooking utensils, iron railings, disused cookers and lengths of railway track, great crests of heavier stuff swept toward the building in a rusty and remorseless flood—a flood culminating in a tidal wave of smashed car bodies, dented boilers and the skeletons of traction engines that had once, in their day, hauled entire circuses.

Dwarfed by this metal deluge, Bartoluzzi stood waiting. The helicopter sank down from the sky over the mountains forming the border with Czechoslovakia, skimmed across the surf of green tree tops that washed against the foothills, and lowered itself neatly to the ground in an open space between one of the mounds of scrap and the outer wall of the Folly.

A Plexiglas door opened in the machine's nose, and a lithe figure clad in black dropped to the ground.

Black boots laced to the knee strode purposefully across to the porch in which Bartoluzzi was waiting; beneath a form fitting black leather flying suit, the curves of a supple body moved enticingly; on the smooth brow of a black helmet, goggles were pushed up by black-gloved hands.

And the face, thin-cheeked and pale below the oversized lenses, was the face of Marinka, the blonde from the
kavarna
in Prague.

The Corsican shook hands formally and took her up to the room in which Kuryakin was held prisoner. She glanced cursorily at the inert figure and asked, "Has he come up with anything yet?"

Bartoluzzi shook his head. "He may not be the real Cernic, but he's a tough one all the same," he growled. "I was just about to make a change in the method, when I heard your plane."