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

by Peter Leslie

  ‘A set of conditions?’

  ‘That’s it! A set of conditions! A set of conditions in which this equipment might be made to react falsely without permanently damaging it…but I’d like to brood on it before I commit myself.’

  ‘You do that. In the meantime, we’ll start on the social side, as we said…’

  At seven thirty, they met Helga for a drink in the airport lounge. Sheridan Rogers had still not returned to her apartment, nor had she left any message at the T.C.A. office or in the bureau in the terminal building. They gave her a half hour and left at eight o’clock – calling once again at the empty flat on the way to Haut-de-Cagnes.

  Illya, customarily a reserved companion, was abnormally quiet and worried during the short journey. Solo and Helga, torn between the extremes of failing to cheer him up and appearing too flippant in the face of his obvious distress, struck a kind of subdued bantering note in their exchanges as the car sped along the motor road to Cros-de-Cagnes and then turned inland towards the mediaeval village perched so picturesquely above it. From the coast, ‘Haut-de-Cagnes presents a symmetrical aspect – a pyramid of rough, redtiled Provençal roofs crowned by a 14th century Grimaldi castle, beneath whose floodlit and crenellated keep the place clusters at night. But the visitor who ventures along either of the valleys running inland to each side of it soon sees the village in a different perspective. It is built – for a start – at the end of a spur and not on a hillock…so that a moving viewpoint presents constantly shifting profiles. At one moment, the emphasis seems to be rectangular – a line of picture-postcard houses serrating the sky at the top of a squared-up bluff; the next minute, the picture is all zig-zags – a series of slopes linked by hairpin bends, the whole complex rising to stone ramparts and punctuated by clusters of cottages clinging to the wall as tenaciously as the bougainvillea which covers them. And yet on the far side of the valley, a little higher up, an onlooker would characterize the place as a series of stepped terraces, rectangular plots and parcels of land related vertically by the swooping walls of villas and the trailing profusion of flowers hanging from their balustrades…

  Illya drove about a kilometre along the road leading inland to Vence and then made a steep, climbing turn back to the right, approaching the old village from the north.

  The centre of social life in Haut-de-Cagnes is the place at the very summit of the pyramid – a small square dominated by the battlemented turret of the keep. Here a handful of expensive and chi-chi boutiques and souvenir shops vie with the three cabaret-restaurants in the laudable task of parting the tourist painlessly and as elegantly as possible from his money. And here in the summer – especially in August – an absurd and ludicrous number of cars attempt to park.

  As the 404 negotiated the narrow, steep streets leading by degrees to the place, it became increasingly necessary to stop and allow other vehicles room for manoeuvre – despite the traffic lights which in a desultory way tried to regulate the traffic coming up and down. As always, the square was full, and people on their way to the boutiques or the cafés had left their cars absolutely anywhere: they lined the constricted roadway, projected across intersections, blocked the exits from drives and garages, baulked those wishing to turn and sprawled across every available inch of space in the congested village. Illya was eventually forced to turn around at the top and drive down again to a square only half way up the ramparts. After waiting a moment here, they slid into a space vacated by a departing Belgian and climbed back to the place at the top via a steep stone staircase.

  The party from T.C.A. – there were really three separate parties – was easy enough to identify. The alert young men and women in their crisp uniforms had taken over the three outside tables on one of the café terraces.

  Helga, Illya and Solo took a table nearby and watched them curiously for a while. But the stereotyped banter, the stereotyped horse-play and the expected ploys soon palled and they began to look around at the other tourists there. Next door to their restaurant was another, and those sitting outside under the floodlit vine pergolas were separated from them only by a row of white fencing running from the junction of the two buildings. It was very warm in the soft summer darkness – a little humid, perhaps – and the shrill banalities of the holidaymakers sounded loud on the night air. On the far side of the square, beyond the massed high lights of the parked cars, away from the milling convolutions of the café patrons, blue-clad men with lined faces the colour of walnuts played a quiet game of pétanque.

  After a while, someone came out on to the terrace with an accordion and sang. They drank a bottle of cold, aromatic Alsatian white wine and ordered another. A second cabaret turn drifted among the closely packed tables playing a guitar and singing American folk songs. In the distance, they could hear the first singer and her accordion entertaining customers in the basement of the next-door café.

  Motor-car engines started up, revved and whined away in low gear. New arrivals laboured up the hill seeking a place to park. Every now and then a burst of applause or a concerted shout of laughter testified to the success of the evening.

  After the second cabaret act, waiters at the place beyond the white fen pushed together three tables and started laying out glasses and napkins. Several parties had left. Obviously a larger one was expected. Soon a dozen or more people were threading their way among the other clients to reach the long table. All of them, Solo saw when they were installed, were women – and the majority of them were in trousers. Several were very heavy about the haunches, with severe, mannish shirts and lined faces wearing a determined look. Others were willowy and slim, with voluptuous bodies below cropped hair. One red-haired girl with shining eyes wore a low-cut bronze cocktail dress. She was very beautiful.

  Some of them drank pastis but the majority nursed wide, heavy glasses carrying whisky and ice. They were very gay and giggled a lot, the small conversational clumps every now and then coalescing into one big group when someone related an item sufficiently salacious, funny or astonishing to engage their attention.

  The red-haired girl appeared to be the enfant terrible of the party and at the same time a kind of butt. Almost everything she said was greeted with whoops of laughter or exclamations of feigned outrage. After one low-voiced confidence entrusted to her immediate neighbours had resulted in a shriek of mock dismay, a broad-beamed woman at the far end of the table called out: ‘If Macnamara’s going to drag us all down to her level again, at least let her for God’s sake speak up so we can all hear!’

  ‘Oh, but she isn’t,’ the red-head’s neighbours assured the woman, forcibly preventing the girl from rising to her feet and declaiming. ‘We’re having no more of Macnamara!’

  ‘Darling, but I insist…’

  ‘No, Kay. No,’ they chorused, laughing. ‘Macnamara’s banned!’

  And then they all started to sing at once: ‘Tara ra-raaaa, Ta-rat-taraaaa Raaaaa…

  They had been there about twenty minutes when Solo suddenly realized that Sheridan Rogers was among them. She had her back to them and he hoped that Illya would not notice her – for in fact she looked rather drunk, with smudged make-up, a blotchy face and hair over one eye. But unfortunately the Russian chanced to look up then, saw the intensity of his regard, and – following his eye – also noticed the girl.

  ‘Sherry!’ he exclaimed with a great deal of warmth. ‘What happened to you? We’ve been wondering all day. How nice to see you…’ He rose to his feet and crossed to the fencing, leaning over to address the missing date from behind her shoulder. The girl called Macnamara bent her head and whispered something, causing Sherry Rogers to giggle and glance slyly over her shoulder at the Russian. ‘Hi, comrade!’ she said thickly. ‘How goes the investi – investiga – How goes the spy-hunt, eh? Found any more enemy agents under your bed?’ She rose clumsily to her feet and faced him.

  One of the girls in trousers murmured something behind her hand and the whole table burst out laughing again.

  ‘That’s ri’,’ Sherry
giggled. ‘I don’t ’spect he has!…But what are you doin’ here, lover-boy? Have you come to learn yourself a bit of ’xperience? Or are you still after the bold, bad villains for Uncle Sam?’

  Illya had fallen back a pace in bewilderment. ‘Sherry!’ he began; ‘what happened? I thought we had a date…?’

  The girl laughed raucously. ‘That’s a good one,’ she cried. ‘A date with a dream! My li’l Russian Lull’by…What makes you think I stick aroun’ for spy-catchers, comrade?’

  ‘But, Sherry—’

  ‘Oh, wrap it up…You make me tired. You think I’ve nothing better to do—’ The girl’s voice died away. Swaying slightly, she stared across the low fence at him for a moment, then lurched a step to one side and sat down abruptly in her chair. ‘I want a drink,’ she complained.

  In the silence which had fallen over the long table the voice of one of the beefy, butch girls rang out finishing a sentence: ‘…at his hair, darling! It could be one of us in drag…’ A dozen pairs of eyes, bright with maliciousness and amusement, stared at the Russian as he stood flushed and dumbfounded among the red linen tablecloths. Then Helga left her seat and walked over to him. ‘Let’s go, Illya,’ she said softly, touching his arm. ‘I’m afraid you’ll do no good staying here. I’m terribly sorry but there’s no doubt about it…the girl’s plastered!’

  Kuryakin was very quiet as Solo drove them back toward Nice. Once or twice he shook his bead as though in disbelief. At length Solo glanced into the driving mirror, raised his eyebrows at the reflection of the Russian’s glum expression which he saw there, and said seriously:

  ‘Look, Illya – I was as astonished as you were. The girl’s behaviour doesn’t seem to stack up. But we all saw it; we all heard. And I’m sorry – believe me, I’m real sorry…I guess anyone can make a mistake over somebody. In the meantime, I don’t want to come the heavy, but we do have a job to do. We went out to keep an eye on the social life of T.C.A.’s people out here. The ones we went to watch seemed innocent enough – but don’t forget Sheridan Rogers is a T.C.A. employee too.’

  The Russian sighed heavily. ‘Thank you, Napoleon,’ he said. ‘You are quite right, of course. And anyway I have long ago trained myself never to be surprised by what human beings do…at least not after the first shock. It was the…implications that were bothering me here.’

  Solo nodded. ‘I know,’ he said, pulling the car into the side of the road to allow an ambulance to hiss past, the blue light on its roof winking and the urgent two-tone siren blaring. ‘It does rather suggest a new dimension, doesn’t it?’

  Helga said good night and left them at St. Laurent du Var, half-way between Cagnes and the airport. She refused Solo’s offer of a late meal in Nice on the grounds that she had to get back to her own apartment and see to various things. ‘Where do you have to get to, Helga?’ he asked.

  ‘St. Paul-de-Vence. It’s not far – and, look, there’s a taxi rank on the other side of the road. That’s why I asked you to stop here.’

  ‘But Helga – we were half-way there at Haut-de-Cagnes! Why didn’t you let me take you there? Let me turn round and take you now…’

  The wide mouth gleamed in a smile. ‘My dear,’ she said softly, leaning in at the window and laying a hand on his arm, ‘I wouldn’t dream of it. You two boys get back to your hotel. I’ll see you tomorrow. Promise…’

  Before they reached the entrance to the airport another ambulance passed them, followed a moment later by two more together.

  ‘They’re in a hurry!’ Illya commented. ‘There must be a big pile-up on the Promenade des Anglais or something.’

  But he was wrong. The ambulances turned right at the airport. Beyond the spiky palms and the low, rectangular, blue-lit bulk of the terminal building, a crimson glare pulsed in the night sky. Across the dark field vehicles and people on foot swarmed towards an incandescent tangle of wreckage on the main runway.

  And above them, piercing the clouds of smoke, rose a shattered tailplane bearing the three-letter monogram of Transcontinental Airways.

  CHAPTER NINE

  THE SILENT WITNESS

  IN the confusion, among the frantic comings and goings of firemen, nurses, policemen, airport officials, gendarmerie and salvage corps, it was almost impossible to find out what had happened. In the excess of zeal which always affects officialdom on the occasion of disaster, the airport police were moving people on so fast that Solo wasn’t even able to explain who they were. Eventually, they had to leave the Peugeot in one of the public car parks some distance away from the buildings and make their way out on to the apron by dodging the patrols.

  It seemed – from what they were able to glean – that T.C.A.’s evening flight from Paris had crashed on arrival; that the aircraft had hit the ground and burst into flames with the loss of many lives; and that the accident had happened ten minutes or a quarter of an hour before they had arrived – probably while they were driving down from Haut-de-Cagnes, which would explain why they had not heard the impact or the explosion.

  Ultimately, it was the Technical Director who supplied the details. He was hurrying back to the T.C.A. block from the scene of the crash when he saw them and paused.

  ‘Hullo, you chaps!’ he called, actually taking his pipe from his mouth as he spoke. ‘What about this, eh? Carbon copy. Absolute carbon copy of the others, you know…This time I happened to be out on the terrace, watching the crate come in – and he flew straight into the ground again. No doubt about it. He flew it right down on to the deck.’ He shook his head uncomprehendingly.

  ‘And everything was working perfectly, of course?’ Solo asked.

  ‘Well, we can’t say until we’ve examined the pieces, can we? But judging from the dialogue between the captain and the bods up there’ – he jerked his thumb towards the green windows of the control tower behind them – ‘everything seemed to be. Looks as though it’s what you chaps call a dead ringer, what?’

  ‘Survivors?’ Illya queried.

  The Director held up a single finger. ‘Only one. Again,’ he said. ‘Forty-two passengers and the rest of the crew gone west – the survivor’s a steward, for a change.’

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘Hospital, naturally. Don’t know which one they took him to- probably the Anglo-American between here and Villefranche – but I’ll find out for you in a jiff.’

  ‘Is he badly hurt?’

  ‘Apart from shock and shakings, not really – and that’s a change too. He was dead lucky, that one. Dead lucky. In the baggage compartment, you know. Near the tail – so when that broke off…’ he shrugged, smiled and added: ‘He made it.’

  ‘Which way was the plane landing?’ Solo asked.

  ‘Coming in from the Cannes direction. I told you, didn’t I? I saw him take it right down on to – I was going to say into – the deck. Must have been a muckup on the altitude stage of the Murchison-Spears gear. Must have been…And there’s another thing. Just occurred to me, as a matter of fact. Had you noticed – all three…no; four! All four of the crashes here have been landing? None taking off, no wrong trims, no stalling or any of that nonsense. Which again supports the idea of it being altitude evaluation at fault, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Yes,’ Solo said slowly. ‘You have a point there. I guess it does, at that.’

  ‘Oh, most definitely, old chap. No doubt about it.’

  ‘Any V.I.P.’s aboard, by the way?’

  ‘All holidaymakers or businessmen – fortunately.’

  Illya smiled a crooked smile.’ “There’s less to pay with T.C.A., Because of the care they give you there”,’ he quoted softly.

  The Technical Director looked flustered. ‘Oh, no, old chap. I mean really,’ he protested, puffing great clouds of smoke from the pipe. ‘Of course any passenger’s death is a tragedy. Naturally. Perhaps I didn’t express myself too well…But it’s just that if V.I.P.’s are involved, so many bods kick up such a stink that one simply cannot get down to one’s job…which is, after all, to find out wh
at happened and why.’

  Solo clapped him on the shoulder. ‘Never mind,’ he said with a grin. ‘Don’t take us too seriously…old chap!…nobody else seems to.’

  A smoke-grimed tender, the legends Sapeurs-Pompiers and Ville de Nice blistered on its scarlet sides, passed them on its way to the exit gates in convoy with three closed ambulances. A young fireman dropped from the tender, wrenched off his metal helmet, and was quietly sick into a clump of bushes.

  Dang – Dong – Dinggg…the three-chime call sign of the airport announcing system shouldered its incongruous way through the confusion. ‘Lufthansa regret to announce the cancellation of their Flight number…’ The amplified words echoing from the P.A. speakers sounded oddly thin out of doors. Solo and Illya Kuryakin walked round to the T.C.A. maintenance unit and waited for the Technical Director to find them the name of the hospital to which the plane’s only survivor bad been transported. Helga Grossbreitner was in the main office, lovely as ever if a little harassed, coping with a flood of calls on three different phones. She had heard the news on the radio as soon as she got home, and had hurried to the airport at once to offer what help she could to the airline’s staff.

  The hospital was a small one, lying somewhere back behind the harbour. The two agents drove past rows of small shops – still brightly lit even at this late hour – a couple of pavement cafés thronged with people, and a terrace of old houses. Beyond the mellowed ochre facades with their delicate iron balconies, an apartment block reared towards the sky. Between the two, an archway spanned the entrance to the hospital driveway.

  They drove through and found themselves among trees. A double row of planes bordered each side of the drive and carried the eye on to the hospital itself. It was an elegant building in the style of the old houses at one side of the entrance – tall, narrow, weathered shutters leading on to the balconies and a shallow roof sheltering painted friezes.