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 thes
e 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.
The Brainwash Affair Page 5