The stewardess then repeated her information in English. Napoleon Solo gestured, trying to get Elisabeth’s attention. The girl’s sandy-gold hair gleamed with a lovely luster in the glow of the tiny reading spotlight shining down from above her. The seat beside her was vacant. The count had excused himself a few moments ago. Solo and Illya had exchanged places earlier.
Solo reached across the aisle. “Elisabeth? Elisabeth, I’d like to say---“
“No use,” Illya interrupted. “The poor girl must be exhausted. She’s asleep.”
Little tension lines formed around Solo’s mouth. This appeared to be the case. Elisabeth swayed ever so gently from side to side in her seat, her body stirred by the vibration of the great jet engines through metal of the fuselage.
What damnable drug was already in her body, reducing her from the lively, quick-witted creature he’d known to the kind of limp hulk he watched now? Solo started to thrust up out of his seat. Perhaps if he slipped over beside her, he could wake her. This was his only opportunity. Beladrac hadn’t left the cabin until just moments ago. He moved in her direction---
A soft clicking to his left caught Solo’s attention. A flame glared. Solo turned, knowing he’d been discovered. He recovered his aplomb, smoothed his tie as the count emerged from the first class lavatory.
The count tossed and caught the massive, gold filigree lighter with which he’d lit his cigarette. He strode down the aisle, moved into his seat to block Solo’s view of the girl again.
“Of course you were just getting up to use the facilities, eh?” the count inquired mockingly.
“Of course,” Solo murmured. Fuming, he walked up the aisle.
He stepped inside the tiny cubicle, latched the door. An idea had suggested itself. He pulled out his pocket communicator. He adjusted the calibrations so that the device would not interfere with any of the communications instruments aboard the aircraft. He called for channel D to open.
Mr. Waverly was out of headquarters for the evening. Did agent Solo wish him contacted? No, Solo merely wanted to be put through to the duty officer in Identifications.
In a moment he was in contact, asking that the computers check their voluminous memories concerning the count and THRUSH. The very quickness with which the duty officer replied indicated a negative check:
“Code condition blue forty-ought, Mr. Solo. That’s---“
“---an indication of a possible connection only.”
“Correct, sir. Nothing at all definite.”
Solo said thanks and switched off. Perhaps he was letting jealousy foul him. It was true that after the initial rumors a few years ago, nothing else had connected the count to the supra-nation. Perhaps the informer who mentioned the count’s name had some personal grudge, and decided to settle it as best he could before dying. Such things happened.
Puzzled and uncertain about his next step, Solo returned to his seat. He noticed as he sat down that Elisabeth had wakened. She gave a listless smile.
“Napoleon, I’m sorry we won’t---“ She faltered. She brushed at her forehead. Beladrac looked bland for a change, as though he didn’t notice. “---won’t have a chance to have dinner in Rome.”
“I am too, Elisabeth. Though I’m sure the count wouldn’t enjoy it.”
“Quite right, signor.”
Lugo Beladrac treated Napoleon Solo to one of those full-toothed, insulting grins that broke his incredibly ugly face into a webwork of wrinkles.
Solo’s pulse hammered with anger. He sat down, wondered how high his blood pressure had shot. Waverly would discipline him if he tore into Beladrac merely because the man was boorish and insulting. Yet what satisfaction it would give him. What intense satisfaction!
Soon the no smoking signs lit, and the great jetliner drifted gently downward toward the lights of Rome spread across the seven hills and for miles into the distance. The jet swooped in for its landing.
As soon as the stewardess unfastened the hatch, Count Beladrac took Elisabeth’s arm and steadied her out into the aisle. The count shoved a couple of other passengers rather rudely, with the result that he and Elisabeth were the second couple to leave the first class section. Solo went to claim his topcoat, his mind flashing with an image of Elisabeth’s little travel bag bobbing in her gloved right hand as she walked off the plane.
Normally quick to follow his friend, Illya Kuryakin had remained in his seat by the window. He hunched far back, so that he could not be easily seen from outside. Then, abruptly, Illya jumped up.
”I waited to watch the count going into the terminal, Napoleon. He used that heavy gold lighter again.”
Irritable and tired from the long trip, Solo said, “What’s so unusual about that?”
“Oh, nothing, apart from the fact that he didn’t have a cigarette in his mouth. Count Beladrac appeared to be holding the lighter close to his face, examining it. Or talking into it. We’d best be careful.”
“And we’d better hurry up about it. I want to follow them.”
“There’s no evidence that our friend is---from the birds. Just your hunch.”
As they stepped from the plane and clattered down the metal stairs, Solo affirmed that this was correct. Quickly he told Illya about the talk with New York, the negative report.
“But I still think he knew who we were. I mean, what organization we represent. It could be just coincidence, his traveling with Elisabeth. And yet---“
“I sense that the green devils of envy are stoking the fires of your imagination, Napoleon.”
“It may be that, all right. But it won’t hurt to tag after them. Elisabeth’s too foggy to notice. And if Beladrac’s a professional, he’ll notice right away. If he doesn’t, then we can cross him off and look for threats against Elisabeth from some other quarter.”
By now they had entered the terminal proper. Italian officials waited to check their papers and luggage. Across the brightly-lit chamber, the count and Elisabeth were just completing the formalities, claiming their luggage and heading out along the concourse, presumably toward the motor park.
Fortunately the authorities only took a few moments to clear the agents. Solo risked using his U.N.C.L.E. identification to speed things along.
“This way,” Solo called, heading left along the clattering concourse. “We’ll get the bags later.”
He broke into a half run. Elisabeth and the count were disappearing in the crowd ahead.
Solo and Illya fought their way through the throng, murmuring apologies in English and Italian. They had gone perhaps a dozen yards when they spotted a strange-looking group coming toward them---a man, his wife, and two youngsters of a size to be perhaps eight or nine.
The man wore a cheap suit and a red lodge fez. The woman carried a straw bag full of souvenirs, was thin-faced and hard-eyed. The children, a boy and a girl, dogged after them. The boy scuffed along with his head down, his face concealed by a child’s fedora. The girl wore a straw hat which likewise hid her face.
The man, beefy and red nosed, angled toward Solo with one hand gripped around an expensive camera on a leather neck strap, Illya tried to dodge. The tourists were quicker, cutting them off:
“Why, hello there! It’s Cousin Eustis from the States!” cried the man, seizing Solo’s arm and shoving him back against the concourse wall. The man’s breath smelled of garlic but he spoke with all the perfection of an American from the Midwest.
“Cousin Eustis and his friend,” said the woman, crowding in on one side of Illya. Her eyes were stone-bright.
The children were out of sight behind their parents. A few Italians passing glanced at the loud-mouthed family distastefully. Otherwise the people paid no attention.
“I’m not your cousin, you simpleton,” Solo fumed. “Get out of my way and---“
He saw the man’s hand rise toward the lens barrel of the camera, touch what looked like the shutter release. A cloud of purple gas squirted from a tiny hole in the lens cap. Solo reacted instantly and drove backwards against Illya wi
th a warning shout.
Illya was knocked off balance. Solo righted himself, catching a whiff of purplish gas. A choking nauseous feeling rose in his throat. Something came winking at him from the right.
He whirled. The woman’s stiletto, evidently drawn from her phony tourist handbag, stabbed at his throat like a glittering needle. Solo caught the woman’s wrist. He deflected the blow but the blades’ needle tip nearly hit his cheek anyway.
Illya, meantime, was having troubles of his own.
The two children swarmed around his legs. From under a shawl she carried, the girl produced a small nickeled pistol which she pointed at Illya’s midsection. He batted her arm. In doing so, his elbow caught the brim of the little boy’s junior-sized fedora. The hat flicked off---
The bogus boy raised a tough, leathery, middle-aged midget’s face. A gun flashed in his hand. The phony father maneuvered to give Solo another squirt of the gas. Solo squeezed the woman’s wrist. She dropped the knife.
The disguised midgets---the girl’s hat had come off in the struggle; she had a tough, runty little harridan’s face too---caught Illya between them. He dropped flat just as the pair of pistols went off.
Someone in the crowd screamed and fell. Solo shoved the woman away from him so hard that she stumbled. The bogus father used the opportunity to grab Solo’s shoulder, spin him around and release a blast of gas in his face. The gas caught him full in the nose, making his lungs vibrate with pain. He groped for the man with the camera.
The man danced backward, snarling low: “One dose of that stuff, signor, and your uncle will be seeking a new nephew.”
Solo’s lungs burned. The midgets were trying to elude Illya. He was scrambling across the floor, trying to catch them by their ankles. A large crowd was gathering, though people seemed uncertain whether the fight was genuine, or some sort of movie stunt, because of the bizarre presence of the dwarfs.
The false father called out sharply in Italian. The midgets scuttled away after him through the crowd.
On his knees with everything turning and whirling around him, Solo heard Illya say: “Napoleon, if that gas is lethal we must find a doctor.”
“You get after Elisabeth. Don’t lose her.”
Solo lifted his head. His eyes blazed a moment, fierce, hard with the force of his command. “Do it, Illya, Elisabeth is the one who matters now.”
He didn’t have to explain to Illya that she mattered because this attempted assassination proved beyond all doubt that Beladrac worked for THRUSH, and had called in helpers to do away with the agents because he had recognized them.
Excited voices babbled in Italian all around them. “Napoleon, I can’t leave. The gas may be---“
“Get after her!” Solo shouted. Professionalism won. Illya stood up. He turned and dashed away.
This could be it, Solo thought. His eyes watered. Faces, bodies pressing in around him were vague smears rather than clearly defined things. His lungs burned and burned. He lurched to his feet. He swayed like a drunken man, his hair unkempt, his suit a mess. A portly woman at the edge of the crowd moaned and crossed herself. Air. That’s what he needed. It was air---
Solo’s vision dimmed even more. He wondered how far into his system the lethal gas had worked. He charged at the crowd like a blinded bull. People scattered. Ahead, Solo made out the chromium rails encircling another lounge area, this one deserted. He stumbled against the railing, slid to his knees.
Panting, he rested his cheek against the cool metal. Far away, he recognized the Italian words someone was shouting. They were calling for the nearest policeman.
Napoleon Solo gathered up all the strength he had left and dragged himself between the rails into the lounge. He picked up one of the plastic chairs. It seemed to weigh heavy as all the earth. He smashed the chair against the plate glass window of the lounge.
The glass exploded outward. Solo lurched forward again, stepped across the upthrusting points of glass still in the frame and fell forward. His cheek slid in a patch of oil as he came to rest on the concrete, belly down.
He sucked in great hungry gulps of night air tainted with the stink of airplane fuel. Everything darkened---Wondering if he’d ever wake again, he blacked out completely.
FIVE
Illya Kuryakin ran like a madman, and a madman without manners at that. He thrust men and women aside bodily in his wild race to the main doors which led to the motor park. A policeman approached on the left, jabbering at him and waving a wand, ordering him to stop.
Quickly Illya dodged around an old gentleman, circled a woman carrying a baby, plunged through a set of glass doors. Taxi men beckoned him. He ignored them, racing to the parking area.
Down one of the ranks of parked vehicles, an impressive pale gray Rolls-Royce was backing out of its slot. As the car backed around, Illya saw sandy-gold hair flash briefly in the rear window.
Bent double below the rear window sight line, Illya ran as he’d seldom ran before. He caught up to the Rolls just as it completed its backing maneuver. At the instant the driver shifted the gears forward, Illya stepped onto the bumper with his right shoe. Illya dragged his left shoe up while his fingers found uneasy purchase above.
The Rolls gathered speed. Right away he knew he couldn’t hang on for long. He’d caught them. But it would be empty victory when he fell off onto the pavement in a few more seconds. His fingers were slipping, slipping already---
ACT II
GRAND PRIX OF DEATH
The Rolls glided down the aisle between parked vehicles. A pair of lovers kissing in an open Fiat convertible sat up and pointed. No doubt he looked ridiculous, Illya thought, attempting to cling to the rear end of the large luxury car. He felt ridiculous, doubly so when he realized that the occupants of the Rolls must have seen the startled expressions and the gestures of the boy and girl in the Fiat.
Just as the Rolls reached the last cars parked in the rank and started its left turn into the exit lane, the driver hit the brake pedal. Illya’s skull bounced against metal in the center of the drive.
Beladrac, an impressive pistol in one fist, hopped out of the tonneau. Illya scrambled up. The chauffer bore in. Illya’s right fist punched deep and hard into the chauffer’s midsection. The man went oomph and doubled. Illya knee-lifted him away, just as Beladrac’s ugly face loomed around to his right.
Illya whirled, tried to raise his arm to block the chopping pistol-blow the count was smashing down onto his head. Beladrac used his free hand to seize Illya’s wrist, twist his guard aside. Falling, Illya heard the count cry in a loud voice, “That will teach you, vermin! The young lady may have been your girlfriend last week, but she now prefers a nobleman to a penniless student. Your insane tactics won’t change that.”
The chauffer had Illya by the throat now, throttling him while the count continued his declamation for the benefit of the startled lovers in the Fiat. “Come, come, fellow! We’ll take you home to your nasty little flat. You can sober up there.
Illya was by now lying on the ground. Beladrac hissed at the chauffer: “Get the needle into his arm, you---“ A string of Italian obscenities here.
Writhing, Illya Kuryakin hit at the chauffer’s face, missed. Beladrac stepped on his midsection. Something silver-cool and sharp pricked through the fabric of his coat. He tried to roll away from it.
Beladrac laughed, booted him in the side of the head, then gave forth with another small oration about the viciousness of the lower classes.
Illya was dizzy. A strange lassitude accompanied the dizziness. He tried to punch at the chauffer again. His muscles seemed to be operating in slow motion. Finally his knuckles connected with the chauffer’s chin, grazing it, but it felt as though he’d smacked cotton-candy instead of something solid.
His adversaries gave him room. Illya flopped over on his side. He stuck his hand out toward the bumper of the Rolls-Royce. It seemed to recede from him like a planet whirling away through immense spaces.
At last he caught hold of the metal. He
got his other hand on the bumper too. In that way he dragged himself forward to where he could push himself up, stand goggling at the lights of the motor park that whirled and blurred like speeding comets.
Against the backdrop of the lights and the night sky Illya saw the looming immensity of Count Lugo Beladrac’s ugly face. The count’s teeth shone like mirrors. In the depths of his eyes, hatred flickered.
“All right, clod. If you can walk, get yourself in the car. We’ll drive you home.”
Dimly seen past the count’s shoulder, the young couple from The Fiat watched curiously. Illya held out his hands to them. He shouted with the full strength of his lungs that he was being dragged into a trap, that the count was going to take him away and kill him.
No sound came from his throat. His mouth worked in silence. Sweat popped out on his forehead. He began to shudder as the drug that had been injected into his bloodstream worked its full effect. Suddenly his legs betrayed him. He sprawled on the concrete, seized by violent convulsions.
Beladrac laughed coldly somewhere. The chauffer seized Illya by the armpits, dragged him up to the front of the Rolls-Royce, opened the door and folded him onto the floorboards of the front seat.
As the auto gathered speed, sweeping out of the motor park, Illya heard a voice he recognized as Elisabeth’s murmur dazedly from the back seat: “What---what’s wrong with Mr. Kuryakin, Lugo?”
“Probably a touch of air sickness, my dear.”
“Yes, but why was he following us? Why was he attacking you?”
“Oh, no doubt something to do with that fellow Napoleon Solo’s insane jealousy. Don’t fret over it.”
“I don’t understand.” Elisabeth sounded terribly foggy, uncertain of the very words she said. “Lord, I wish I could rest. I’m so tired---“
Count Beladrac’s voice dropped to a low, soothing note: “Shortly, my dearest. It’s been a tiring trip. I’ll see that you have the proper chance to gather your strength before you do---ah---whatever it is you must do here in Rome.”
The Ugly Man Affair Page 4