07-The Radioactive Camel Affair

by Peter Leslie

  “Which is?”

  “For every isolated piece of important information, irrespective of how simple or complicated, one thousand dollars. It may seem a lot—but, as you see, I have overheads.”

  Solo took a wallet from his breast pocket and counted out ten hundred dollar bills. He laid them on the table.

  “…Plus twenty-five percent service charge,” Tufik continued suavely. “One of the reasons I get such good protection is that the boys there are on a percentage. That’s why Gaston spurned your little bribe.”

  Solo opened the wallet again and took out two more hundreds and five tens, placing them on top of the bills already on the table.

  “…And one percent state tax.”

  “You’re not serious!”

  “Certainly I am. There’s different kinds of protection, boy.”

  Solo shook his head in disbelief and pulled two crumpled five dollar bills from his pocket.

  “Right.” Habib Tufik’s voice was suddenly brisk. “I can answer your questions, as it happens, without any research. The consignment—let’s just say it’s highly radioactive—did leave today, at dawn. It’s in a lead canister that’s much heavier than it looks.”

  “Good. And the contact?”

  “You’ll be traveling by air? Fine. Now, the day after tomorrow, take the Corniche and you’ll find Stanley Bay—it’s the usual sort of bathing beach with a sea-front and a parapet and I don’t know what-all. At the far end, on the landward side of the road, there’s a tatty little restaurant called La Terraza. It stands all by itself; you couldn’t miss it. Order a Turkish coffee and an Izarra and wait there. You’ll be joined by a little man called Mahmoud, who works in the Weights and Measures office. I think he’ll be able to help you.”

  “What time the day after tomorrow? I can’t drink Izarra all day!”

  “Well now, the harbor at Alexandria’s a very interesting place, they do say. If you was to take a walk down there in the morning, say at about eleven-thirty, I shouldn’t be surprised if someone managed to get a message to you about that.”

  Solo rose to his feet. “Thank you very much,” he said.

  “A pleasure, sir. There’s a thing you might be able to tell me, now, before you, go. Talking to your friend who met with such a sad end, I found he referred several times to an organization which calls itself Thrush. Now, I never heard tell of that. Do you know what it is?”

  “You won’t have heard of it because it never appears in newspapers or on agency tapes,” Solo said with a wintry smile. “But it’s a tremendously powerful organization just the same.”

  “You don’t say! And just what exactly is it?”

  “It’s…How on earth would you define Thrush, Illya?”

  “It is a supra-nation,” Kuryakin said. “A syndicate of scientists, industrialists, mathematicians, political theorists and would-be dictators, all of them brilliant brains with respectable cover occupations—but all of them dedicated to what those who moralize would call evil.”

  “And where are they based?”

  “Everywhere.” Illya got up and crossed the room to a large globe standing on a side table. He spun the sphere and jabbed a finger towards the revolving surface. “Anywhere I care to stop that globe, my finger will be pointing at a territory containing a Thrush satrap.”

  “In the name of God, what’s that?”

  “An undercover cell—it may be a manufacturing complex, a university, a chain of stores, anything. It’ll carry out the purpose for which it was ostensibly set up. But underneath, it will have a secret life of its own: to further the aims of Thrush.”

  “And what would they be, for God’s sake?”

  “Quite simply, to dominate the Earth They work for no one; they have no allies—only enemies. So far as Thrush is concerned, either you’re one of them or you’re to be ruled or destroyed. Which is not to say they won’t help the East against the West, or vice versa, if it serves their purpose.”

  “They have an enormous treasury,” Solo put in, “financed by a vast series of enterprises, legal and criminal. And they can command the latest in weapons and communications—whole armies if need be, if the Council considered they could be useful.”

  “The Council?”

  “The ruling body—the super-brains at the top.”

  “And could you be telling me, now, the names of one or two members of this Council—a couple of them normally based in this part of the world, for instance?”

  “Certainly. The information will cost you one thousand dollars. There is no service charge.”

  Habib Tufik grinned suddenly. “Good night, gentlemen,” he said. “It’s been a pleasure seeing you. A real pleasure.”

  He sat for some minutes after they had gone, staring pensively at the papers scattered on his table. At last he reached slowly for the telephone. “Hallo?” he said. “Get me the Commissariat of Police, will you?”

  Chapter 4

  Contact with the Enemy

  THE FIRST ATTACK CAME—rather as Solo had anticipated—almost as soon as they left Habib Tufik’s premises. Broken-nose and his cronies were conspicuous by their absence as Solo and Illya threaded their way out through the din in the coffee shop, and as they pushed open the wrought iron gate leading to the court, Solo said quietly, “Keep your eyes open—I have a hunch.”

  “The half-caste we heard on the speaker?”

  Solo nodded. “I just have a feeling.”

  “Surely you don’t think Thrush is on to us already, Napoleon?”

  “I don’t know. Could be. Or it could be just that the fellow doesn’t like our type and really thinks we are police spies. Or again he might think we have money. You’re always in danger of getting rolled at night in this part of the town…”

  “If it was Thrush, would you suspect our fat friend.”

  “Of giving us away? No, I don’t think so. I don’t think his ignorance of Thrush was faked—and, anyway, I imagine he plays a fair game by his own standards. He’d be out of business otherwise.”

  “‘Faithful to thee, Cynara, in my fashion,’” Illya quoted softly.

  “You and your night-school…” Solo began chidingly—then suddenly, without an instant’s warning, the fight began.

  They had anticipated an ambush somewhere in the dark, cobbled alley leading downhill to the place where they had left the taxi. But when the attack came, it was from above. Half a dozen men leaped down upon them from a balcony above the archway connecting the alley and the court, and in a moment all was confusion.

  Solo was sent sprawling to the wet cobbles by a violent blow in the back. He rolled with the fall, drawing his knees up to protect his stomach, so that the follow-up man jumping for his belly tripped and fell heavily beside him. The agent chopped him viciously, flat-handed, to the throat and twisted eel-like to his feet as two more men rushed him with upraised arms.

  Kuryakin was on the far side of the alley. His assailant had misjudged his leap and the Russian had been sent spinning across the narrow thoroughfare to slam against the wall, where he was now desperately trying to fend off a trio of attackers bent on clawing him down. Solo dragged his gun—the semi-automatic Special which fired bullets either singly or in bursts—from its shoulder holster. But before he could thumb off the safety catch, a paralyzing blow on the right arm dropped it from his nerveless fingers. More blows were raining on his head and shoulders, and he saw from the corner of his eye the lamplight gleaming on the length of lead pipe which had crippled his arm. He drove his left elbow into a solar plexus, brought his knee up to parry a kick for his groin, and chopped down again on the man who had fallen—who was now groping for Solo’s gun where it lay on the cobbles. The man grunted and collapsed on his face as Solo kicked the weapon, spinning, into the middle of the alley. With a heave of his shoulders, the agent broke momentarily free and piled a left with all his weight behind it to the jaw of the man with the lead pipe. The attacker dropped like a stone, his club clattering to the ground.

  I
llya had butted one man in the face—he sat in the roadway with blood from a smashed nose streaming through his fingers—and was now trading punches with the remaining pair, as Solo was left facing the half-caste. A knife with a wickedly curved blade had suddenly appeared in the man’s hand.

  The agent backed warily away along the wall, his eyes fixed on the murderous face. With a tigerish bound, the half-caste was on him. Solo twisted aside as the knife blade scraped sparks from the wall. The assassin whirled and crouched for another spring, knife arm held wide. Sidling further along the wall, Solo found himself in front of a recessed doorway. As his antagonist attacked again, Solo backed momentarily into the entry, keeping one hand on each doorpost, and then—using his hands as levers—launched himself feet first, like a wrestler, at the half-caste.

  Steel ripped through his jacket as his heels caught the man full in the chest, knocking him to the ground. It was no time for Queensberry Rules: the agent scrambled upright, stamped on the man’s knife hand and took a running fly-kick at his head. The metal-capped tip of his shoe connected just below the ear—and broken-nose was out for the count.

  As Solo turned towards Illya, he saw the Russian suddenly go limp and collapse to the ground. He increased his pace—but Kuryakin had been feinting. He rolled out from under the legs of the two men who had been pinning him to the wall, and was on his feet twoyards behind them before they realized they had been tricked. As they turned, his hand dipped into his pocket and reappeared holding what looked like a pistol-grip cigarette lighter. There were two soft, flat explosions. The thugs halted, staggered, and subsided to the ground at his feet.

  “Too bad they were only sleep darts,” Solo panted. “Come on, let’s get out of here—Oh! Wait a minute. My gun…”

  As they searched the dark alleyway, they realized for the first time since they had left the coffee shop that it wasn’t raining any more. Throughout the fight, which had lasted perhaps two and a half minutes, not a light had come on, not a window had been opened, not an inquiring head had appeared—and now they were suddenly aware of the persistent trickling and splashing and dripping of water from eaves and broken guttering all around them. From somewhere over the rooftops, a motor horn blared momentarily.

  But the gun was nowhere to be found.

  “I kicked it hard,” Solo said. “It may have spun further than I thought. I wonder…”

  “Perhaps one of the—er—casualties is lying on it, Napoleon. Shall I turn them over to have a look?”

  Solo glanced back at the scene of combat. Broken-nose and the two sleep dart victims lay where they had fallen. The man with the smashed face still sat dazed and sobbing into his bloodstained hands. But the other two men Solo had felled were stirring and groaning.

  “No,” he said decidedly. “Forget it. For all we know, there may be reinforcements on the way. Let sleeping dogs lie—in every sense of the term. Let’s get on our way while we can.”

  Half running, half walking, they limped down the hill. Illya’s face was bruised and swollen. There was a jagged cut on his for head, his collar was torn open and one sleeve had been ripped from his raincoat. Solo was less obviously marked, but there was an ugly contusion at one side of his head, his body ached all over and his right arm was still useless. The half-caste’s knife had slashed clean through raincoat and jacket and the missing gun’s chamois holster—which had probably saved his life—was sliced in two. Both of them were covered in mud and filth from head to foot.

  As they rounded the corner in the street, they halted abruptly. By the light from the intersection where the taxi had turned they could see three men in wide-brimmed hats and long raincoats advancing up the hill towards them.

  Before they had time to think, there was the plop of a silenced revolver and a bullet struck the cobbles by Illya’s feet and screeched into the night.

  “Quick!” Solo gasped. “Back around the corner!”

  They scrambled around the bend into temporary shelter—only to hear, further up the hill, a hoarse shout. The two thugs Solo had knocked down were on their feet. Faint lamplight gleamed for a second on steel.

  “Caught in the middle!” Solo exclaimed. He looked desperately around him at the blank-walled alley. “Up there! Quickly!”

  He leaped for a low wrought-iron balcony projecting above a barred doorway and grasped the sill with his fingers. For a moment his numb right arm gave way and he hung by one hand. Then he managed to swing one leg up and replace the wrist of his damaged arm between the bars. From there, painfully, he levered himself to a position in which he could haul himself over the railings. A moment later Kuryakin dropped to the floor of the balcony beside him.

  Light seeped through the slats of flimsy shutters across the French windows. Illya dropped to one knee and peered through. “It’s all right,” he whispered, “the glass doors behind are wide open.”

  Solo nodded. Footsteps clattered on the cobbles as voices called in the dark alleyway below. He drew back his right foot and slammed his heel through the flimsy crosspieces about halfway up. The wood splintered and gave inwards. Illya thrust his arm through the jagged space and twisted the catch, jerking the door open towards him.

  Inside the squalid bedroom behind the shutters, a fat woman with hennaed hair had been admiring herself in a fly-blown pier-glass. She jumped to her feet, flabby body quivering, as the two agents tumbled through the aperture. The face painted over her features cracked open in a smile.

  “Not without an appointment, messieurs, if you please,” she croaked with mock severity.

  “Don’t worry, we’re just passing through,” Solo said with an abstracted smile as they made for the door.

  “Mind, I could make an exception…” the woman began.

  But Solo and Illya were already halfway down the dingy passageway outside. Doors sealed it off along each side and at either end.

  “There must be a way to the stairs somewhere,” Solo muttered. “Come on—we’ll try the end one.”

  From somewhere on the floor below a persistent hammering started. Nearer, there was a faint echo of music. They flung open the door at the end of the corridor.

  It led to another bedroom. A couple lay in bed listening to a transistor radio. In the far corner, a baby slept in a cot.

  The man started up in terror, clutching the bedclothes across his splendid chest. “I don’t want no trouble, man,” he stammered. “I don’t want to get involved in no—”

  “The stairs,” Solo rapped, interrupting him. “Where are the stairs?”

  “Look, I don’t want no trouble. I don’t want to get involved.”

  “The stairs?”

  “If you want money, man, I ain’t got none. If you’re from the police, this here’s my wife and that’s our kid. I don’t want no—”

  “In the name of God, where are the stairs?”

  Suddenly realizing what a frightening sight they must be, Illya turned to the girl. “Look,” he said gently, “there’s a gang of men after us who want to murder us. All we want to know is—which door leads to the staircase?”

  The girl stared at them through sleepy eyes. “Second on the right,” she murmured. “Turn left at the bottom for the back entrance.”

  “Thanks. Sorry for the interruption.”

  “Be my guest,” the girl said. “Edward, for God’s sake lie down.”

  The hammering on the front door had stopped. Bullets splintered through the woodwork as they charged down the stone steps, turned left, and pelted along another passage. The rear entrance was an archway leading off a crude kitchen where an old Arab woman still slept upright in a chair by the stove. They crossed a small yard, climbed onto a wall from a row of refuse bins, and dropped ten feet to a sunken alley on the far side. The passage traced an irregular course between tall buildings for several hundred yards, finally terminating in a flight of steps which led down to a brightly lit street. Half an hour later they were safely back at their hotel.

  The second attack came the following mornin
g. Solo had coded a message to cable to Waverly and they were on their way to the main post office in a taxi. Banks of high cloud scudded across a sunny sky, though the drying road was still greasy from the night’s rain.

  They were only a few blocks from their destination when a Renault 16 passed them with the loading window at the back propped open. It was Illya who noticed the car slacken speed momentarily when it was about fifty yards ahead. Two men were maneuvering something by the open window. Then, as the Renault accelerated viciously away, a square, black, heavy object fell to the road and lay spinning in their path.

  There was no time for speech. Kuryakin’s hand darted forward over the back of the drivers seat. Grasping the handbrake, he hauled on it with all his strength.

  With its rear wheels suddenly locked, the heavy cab slewed sideways across the slippery road with a screaming of tires. The back end broke away, the startled driver over-corrected, and the taxi—with Illya still wrenching desperately at the lever—turned completely around and shot backwards into a traffic island, where it slammed into a post and turned slowly over onto its side.

  The noise of the crash was drowned in the explosion, which blew a ten-foot crater in the roadway. Miraculously, nobody was hurt.

  “That settles it, then,” Solo said just afterwards, as he picked granules of glass from his hair. “We’ll forget the cable; we’ll forget the direct flight we booked. If we go straight back to the hotel to pick up our luggage, we can just make the earlier Royal Air Maroc Caravelle to Rome and we can change planes there and fly to Cairo…”

  By midnight, a hired car had deposited them in Alexandria.

  Chapter 5

  Exit Mr. Mahmoud

  THE SEA at Stanley Bay was oyster colored and smooth. Every few minutes it gathered itself enough to flop listlessly into a miniscule wave, which sank into the sand before it could recede. Half a mile offshore, water and sky merged, horizonless, into a uniform sheet of gray.