23-The Finger in the Sky Affair

by Peter Leslie

  "It's all right—it's only a sleep dart," Kuryakin said. "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 the place between the two ends of the equipment, she swung the whole apparatus around 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 a halt and the beam stayed on the big transmitter. Smoke poured from the bench and he radio chassis, the plaster on 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 around the beam and ran for the door. As Kuryakin took a 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 here, 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 halfway across the room, there was a low rumbling and armored steel shutters dropped heavily down to seal off both door and window.

  Chapter 15 — All the fun of the fair

  Illya launched himself at the doorway and beat upon the smooth metal curtain—but the armored 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 around 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 onto the steel gray 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 fireworks display was over and the symbolic reconstruction of the sacking 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 onto 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 flames 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 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 stories 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 row of dwarf cypresses, stepped up onto 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, flattening himself against a wall, and peered around the corner 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, souv
enir stands 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 medieval 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 Proven�al 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 cotton candy 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 torn 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 bunch, 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 escaped."

  "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 S�reté boys to come and pick them up, and borrowed some of Celeste's clothes for Sherry, the top two stories 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 banter 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.

  "Illya," she said nervously. "I have to explain—I'm so sorry. That dreadful evening in Haut-des-Cagnes...I'm so ashamed...I was drugged, you see. And then they...they hypnotized me to...to behave like that. Oh, it was awful..."

  The Russian looked down at the girl's white, strained face. "That's all right, Sherry," he said uncomfortably. "Forget it, please. I should have realized they were trying either to frighten us off you, or to make us think you were the weak link in the T.C.A. chain..."

  "Now roll up, ladies and gentlemen!" a huge woman with hoop earrings was bawling in front of the booth. "Five tickets for one franc. Any ticket with a five or a nine at the end of a number wins a prize. Roll up, roll up and try your luck!"

  "Did they harm you—back there in the house?" Illya asked.

  "No. They just kept me tied to that table and gave me an injection every few hours. They were going to...they wanted to..." she broke off and began to cry.

  "Every ticket ending in a five or a nine wins a prize—There! See: the little girl has won the giant teddy bear!"

  A child with pigtails handed over a winning ticket and staggered away hugging the huge toy, her eyes wide in disbelief, as Kuryakin put his arm around Sherry's shoulders. They moved on through the fair, anxiously scanning the faces in the light of the flares.

  "Break the bottles with the metal boules, ladies and gentlemen! Three broken bottles doubles your money. Six shots a franc..."

  "Coconuts, fine coconuts. Knock off the ones you like..."

  "Try your aim with the six-shot repeaters! Five bulls wins a prize—come on, now: only one franc fifty for half a dozen shots..."

  They stopped by the shooting gallery as Solo forced his way through a knot of German tourists arguing over a quoit-throwing prize and came towards them. "It's no good," he shouted over the din. "There's not a chance in hell of locating her among this crowd. We'll have to —"

  Suddenly, Sherry Rogers screamed, pointing frantically over his shoulder.

  Among the cardboard targets and ping-pong balls balancing on jets of water, Helga had appeared behind the counter at the far end of the booth. The long-nosed automatic in her hand was pointing straight at Solo.

  Illya exploded into action. Hurling Solo aside as the gun spat flame, he snatched a target rifle from a blue-chinned Proven�al youth who had just loaded it and snapped three quick shots at the girl from THRUSH. Helga disappeared through the curtain at the back of the gallery.

  "Missed!" Kuryakin called in exasperation. "These fairground guns all have bent barrels! Come on—she went this way..."

  Through the crowd now scattering with astonishment and fear, they pushed their way towards the back of the booth. Helga's shot had passed over Solo's shoulder and severed the cord tethering a mountain of gas-filled balloons, and these, suddenly released, were now bobbing and swaying in bright blobs of color over the heads of the throng.

  "Come on," Illya yelled. "This way. Over here!"

  They fought their way through the jam of bodies, dodged around a blaring hurdy-gurdy and ran over the counter of a coconut game booth. Solo caught one of the hurled wooden balls one-handedly as he leaped across and lobbed it politely back to the astonished thrower.

  Helga was only a few yards away. As they sprinted towards her, she pulled to the ground a pyramid of canned food outside a food stall and sent them skating on the rolling tins.

  As Solo picked himself up, a heavy blow on the shoulder knocked him down again. The girl was behind a pile of metal boules, hurling the steel spheres viciously in their direction.

  "Keep down, Sherry," he calle
d. "You could get hurt. Illya! Pick 'em up and throw them back!"

  They gathered up the heavy balls and began to hurl them back, flushing Helga out from behind the pile and forcing her to retreat among the other booths. Stubbornly, she fought a rearguard action back through the fair towards the ramparts, fending them off with coconuts, cheap crockery, woolly animals—anything she could lay her hands on that could be thrown. And as they went, the crowd parted before them in amazement and then closed in again behind as though nothing had happened.

  But finally the girl was clear of the last stall and running strongly towards the gate. "After her," Solo shouted. "She's heading for the ramparts, again. How many shots has she left in that gun, Illya?"

  "She's used six now," the Russian panted. "Another couple and—if the gun's the model I think it is—she'll have to put in a fresh clip."

  They piled through the archway and labored up the cobbled slope in pursuit, the watchers on the battlements gazing at them in astonishment as they ran past.

  Once they left the narrow main street and swerved onto the wider roadway circling the top of the ramparts, it became suddenly quiet and dark. The torchlight and the noise of the fair were behind them. There was an acrid smell of used gunpowder lingering among the remains of the firework set-pieces fixed to the walls.

  Helga's white shirt was a blur in the darkness charting the progress of her pounding feet. Once she stopped, turned, and fired quickly twice in succession—but the bullets whined harmlessly over their heads.

  Solo glanced at Illya, who nodded and increased his pace. "She can hardly reload while she's running," he gasped. "Let's close up and see if we can corner her."

  They dashed on. And then, rounding a curve in the road, came suddenly to a halt. The walls of the town bulged abruptly here into two turret-like belvederes. As they stood in the nearer of these, Helga Grossbreitner faced them across the gap from behind the parapet of the further one.