Deep in Illya’s belly a cold knot of fear formed.
“I smashed up the Shelly last November at Volkerstone, don’t you see?” continued the count. “She’ll never race again, except for her last ride in just a few minutes now. As long as we plan to scrap her anyway, it occurred to me that we might employ her as your---“
The count paused. His ugly face looked all the more sadistic because of the toothy smile “---your death-engine, so to speak.”
The mechanics were working on the car again. One man in coveralls had his head buried in the cockpit. He used a soldering iron to connect several of the wires which ran back from the bonnet and around the windscreen.
“Then you do work for THRUSH,” said Illya.
“Certainly. Miss d’Angelo does not know that. Yet. I am only her ardent suitor as far as she knows.”
“You brought her here to sabotage the Peace Conference in Rome.”
The count’s forehead puckered. “I don’t feel I am at liberty to discuss details, Kuryakin. I will say this.” He leaned close again, grinning. “U.N.C.L.E. is finished. War is going to start in the Middle East very shortly. THRUSH will be there to pick up the pieces. But even more important, we will soon control hundreds of key operatives within U.N.C.L.E. itself. Against that combination of factors, your organization cannot stand.”
Beladrac seized Illya’s chin and gave it a cruel, neck snapping twist. “Carry that little thought with you to your death, my friend.”
The deep-set eyes turned slightly mad, bright with the hatred Illya had seen many times before, the fanatic hatred which drove THRUSH on. Beladrac’s voice dropped to an insinuating croon.
“Of course it would be much simpler for me to shoot or stab or poison you. But since you eluded the little trap I set for you at the Rome airport, my anger has been piqued. I prefer to have you die in a somewhat more lingering way. Look here.”
The count stepped over to the bonnet of the Shelley-Python. He flicked the wires back to the cockpit.
“My little helpers have rigged this little device, which is a signal mechanism interconnecting the auto’s controls and the motor. The device will steer the car for a certain amount of time. Then it will fail. It will fail while the car is moving along at top speed on some of the deserted and precipitous back roads near here. How long the device will control the car only my associates and I know. I could tell you. But that would spoil your trip. Be assured only that sometime when the car is operating at speed, all systems will go out. What happens then should be delightful, eh? And fitting, you arrogant U.N.C.L.E. swine! Guilliame!”
“Ready, Excellence,” snapped one of the mechanics hovering by the cockpit.
Beladrac looked at his wrist watch. “Truss him up. The girl will be expecting me.”
The mechanics swarmed around Illya. They cut his bonds. Illya punched hard at one of them the moment his hands came free. The mechanic cursed, reeled back. Another mechanic neck-chopped him. Illya’s temples exploded with pain. He slid off the chair, was lifted bodily and hoisted over the Shelley-Python’s bonnet.
The mechanics rolled him in the air like a rug. They placed him face down on the bonnet. They wrapped ropes around him, pinning his arms to his sides. His head stuck out past the headlamps. His ankles were lashed to either side of the windscreen.
“What a bizarre and amusing hood ornament you make, Kuryakin,” the count chuckled.
“Like all the rest of your counterparts,” Illya said wearily, “You’re crazy.”
“Am I? Personally, I feel this is quite an efficient means of dispensing with a car which I no longer want, and an agent who could hamper my affairs.”
The mechanics stepped back. The one known as Guilliame called, “Ready, Excellence.”
“Gentlemen,” said Beladrac blithely, “start your engine.”
One of the mechanics reached into the cockpit. A blasting roar filled the garage. The bonnet began to vibrate ferociously beneath Illya’s belly.
Triple exhaust pipes on either side of the bonnet sprayed out hot gases that washed up against Illya’s trussed hands. One of the mechanics sprang toward the concrete-block wall dead ahead of the car. The man pulled a toggle switch. There was a massive grinding of machinery. The central portion of the wall slid aside, revealing a steeply inclined macadam driveway leading into the darkness. In the distance, on a much lower level, lights in a city and a harbor twinkled, multi-colored. Illya figured that he’d never had such a depressing view of the Riviera before.
Carrying a small metal control box with three lighted dials, Count Beladrac stepped up alongside the bonnet of the Shelley-Python. The count threw the controls one after another. Illya heard the gears engage with a clash, felt the sports car strain forward, waiting for release.
The count’s heavy thumb descended toward a red stud on the faceplate of the box.
“Enjoy your trip, Kuryakin. The car is programmed to negotiate all turns it encounters---until, of course, the mechanism fails. Will that be ten, five minutes from now? An hour? You will doubtless amuse yourself worrying and wondering.”
And with a final sadistic laugh, the count hit the red stud.
FIVE
Like a bullet shot from a rifle, the Shelley-Python screamed out of the garage and hit the curve of the driveway, bearing left. Illya bounced on the bonnet, his midsection punished by terrific jarring concussions. But the ropes were tightly fastened. He didn’t fly off.
The gears shifted automatically as the sports car veered left into a road which fronted a brightly-lit villa. The road angled steeply upward. There was a right turn ahead. Wind blasted Illya in the face. The road rushed at him. The Shelley-Python took the turn, sliding, starting to climb again.
The car went faster, screaming around the turns, bearing up into the deserted hills that overlooked the light-spangled harbor far below.
Illya’s senses deadened with the impact of screaming wind. The programmed car negotiated a ninety-degree turn into another road and went howling down a level stretch flat out.
Illya knew that the machine must be doing at least one hundred by now. He could feel intense heat from the exhaust pipes on either side of the bonnet.
He pulled against his bonds. They gave only a little. And that was a risky business. If he fell off at this speed---
Growing numb, Illya watched the road unreel ahead, dark, flanked by low hills. The Shelley-Python took another right turn, sliding. It went flashing up an S-curve with a thunderous roar.
How long? Illya thought. Sweat formed on his forehead, dried instantly in the punishing wind. How long before the smash?
About thirty minutes after the Shelley-Python went roaring out of the driveway of the villa above Nice, a small, dusty Renault with its engine badly out of tune came puttering up the hill from the direction of the city.
The Renault’s turn light flashed as it swung into the driveway entrance. The car passed a pair of towering pine trees which flanked the entrance. Somewhere an electrified gong rang clamorously three times.
The two men leaped out from behind the cover of the pine trees and into the path of the Renault. The driver applied the brakes at once. The guards carried machine pistols. Though dressed in nondescript clothing, they bore the all too-familiar tough and professional look of Thrushmen.
The first guard remained standing in the path of the headlights while the other tapped the window on the driver’s side.
The driver rolled down the window. The guard snarled, “What’s your business here?”
The man inside the car indicated a large wicker hamper on the seat. He said in smooth French, “I am from the wine shop in Nice. The count telephoned a special order a while ago.”
Gesturing with his machine pistol, the guard said, “Open the hamper.”
“Gladly, monsieur.”
The driver was grateful for his Canadian upbringing. He’d heard and learned French almost as early as English. The hamper lid fell back, revealing several dusty bottles. The guard peere
d at the bottles for a moment, then shrugged.
Ahead, the driveway took a fork. One branch curved away past the front of the rambling three-storey pink stucco villa. This branch led to a basement garage whose outer door was closed. The right branch led straight back past the side of the villa to a side entrance where a light gleamed. It was to this right branch which the guard pointed with his gun barrel.
“That’s the tradesman’s entrance. Ring and someone will take the hamper.”
The driver grinned obsequiously. “Of course. But I always go inside a moment. The count gives most generous tips.”
The guard thought about that. “Five minutes, no more. We have our orders.”
“Certainly, certainly,” said Napoleon Solo in a craven tone. He engaged the shift and shot the little car forward down the drive.
Solo’s nerves were tight-strung. This was a condition he hadn’t expected. Five minutes! How could he get anywhere in that time?
Well, he’d simply have to take the chance, gamble that he could hide out long enough in the house to learn what was happening. He’d worry about the guards when they came after him. In a special pocket of his seedy jacket, the long-muzzled pistol rested reassuringly. The U.N.C.L.E. agent on station in Nice had met Solo at the airport and arranged for his disguise, which included cheap, thick-soled shoes and a Basque cap. The agent provided the car, the hamper, and the information that Count Lugo Beladrac did patronize a particular wine shop in the city. The shop utilized a car of the same make and color for delivery.
The count, of course, had ordered no wine. But subterfuge, no matter how risky, was necessary if he were to get inside the ostentatious villa and find out what had become of Elisabeth and Illya too, if he weren’t already dead.
Following the road map provided, Solo had no difficulty finding the villa up in the hills. The difficult part began now.
He parked the Renault by the tradesmen’s door, climbed out with the hamper. The night air was cool and pine-scented. The stars were high, sharp, bright. Solo rang the ancient bell-twist.
In a moment footsteps thudded inside. The door opened. A swarthy guard in a turtle-neck sweater peered out.
“Delivery for Count Beladrac,” Solo said in a whining voice, already half through the door. He was sure the guards down by the road would be watching.
He bumped past the swarthy man, who had a snubbed-nose automatic in his right hand. Solo shook the hamper. The bottles clinked faintly. “Wine for the count’s dinner.”
Beyond the guard, Solo glimpsed a stairway that went up to a closed door. To the left another stairway ran down to what appeared to be a cellar where a single light shone.
“I wasn’t aware that the count had phoned down for any wine,” the guard said.
“Yes, he did,” Solo returned, setting the hamper on the floor. “Special Cordon Mare Red St. Thomas. Half a dozen bottles. Here, if you don’t believe me.”
Solo opened the hamper. He lifted one of the bottles and turned it as if to show the label. The butt of his left palm pressed the bottom of the opaque bottle. From the foil covered cork a needle-thin stream of nearly colorless vapor hissed, straight at the guard’s nostrils.
The guard’s strangled cry died in his throat. Solo caught the man with one hand as he fell, knocked out instantaneously. Quickly Solo pulled the man down the cellar stairs. He shoved him out of sight beneath them. Then he ran back up, listening.
He could hear nothing through the upper door which led into the villa proper. To go that way would risk instant discovery. He preferred to try another means, one which he’d used before to infiltrate older houses in Europe.
Clutching the hamper to his hip, he crept down into the cellar again. In a second room he found what he wanted, a metal monster of a gas heating plant, shut down, fortunately because the weather was not yet really chilly.
Back in the other room Solo located an old packing case. He stood on this, took out a knife from another pocket and began to pry at an access plate in one of the large, square hot air ducts running off into the darkness from the central furnace.
With a faint squeal of metal, one corner of the plate came loose. Solo listened, tense, breathing lightly. He was acutely conscious of time ticking away. The guards would be studying their watches down by the road.
Carefully he pried the other edges of the plate free. He lowered it to the floor. Then, testing the duct’s weight-bearing capacity by hanging on to its edges and lifting his feet up from the packing case, he found that the duct work was strong enough to hold him. From past experience he’d expected it would be.
In another moment he climbed up inside the square duct. He wriggled his long-muzzled pistol free, holding this in his right hand. The sides of the duct pressed against his shoulders. But he was able to move along by maneuvering his knees and his elbows.
Solo worked his way ahead into the darkness. The duct angled upward. He strained, negotiating the rise with some difficulty. Finally he reached the next level above. Light leaked into the duct past the little upright bars of a discharge grille in the side of the duct a few feet ahead. Solo crawled forward, looked out.
The grille was part of the baseboard in a large, deserted kitchen with a stone floor and hearth. Savory cooking smells drifted to his nostrils. On a wooden table sat a variety of pots and pans and chafing dishes which indicated that someone had finished preparing a meal recently and departed. Ahead along the duct, light leaked in from grilles in other rooms on the main floor. Solo crawled that way.
Surprisingly, the next room he looked out into was a green-tiled chamber where a single lamp light illuminated some unusual furnishings: a dark surgical light in the ceiling; an operating table; consoles of sophisticated monitoring equipment; glass fronted instrument cases.
An operating theater built into the villa’s main floor? It struck Solo as decidedly odd until he remembered what had started this whole sad affair ---Ffolkes-Pryce’s strange pale pink non-blood. Had he stumbled onto the technical center for the whole project?
Moving on down the duct carefully, Solo reached a point where the duct split. One branch ran right, another left. Little grilles let light from various rooms into each branch. From down the left one, voices drifted.
Solo’s heartbeat quickened. The palms of his hands slicked with cold sweat. He was certain he’d caught the tones of a man speaking, and then a woman.
He followed the sound of the voices. After only a few minutes in the duct, he was finding it more difficult to move cautiously. His knees and elbows hurt from pressing against the metal. He thrust his right shoulder forward, then shoved with his right elbow and knee. In that way he could move about six inches.
Repeating with the left shoulder, elbow and knee, he went another half a foot. But he was beginning to ache, and developing a slight case of claustrophobia with the metal pressing him on all sides.
He fought down the feeling and inched closer to the grille on his left, where light and the voices spilled in. He pulled up with his face close to the grille. He rolled his right shoulder under slightly, attempting to turn onto his side so that he could look out. In his left kneecap a cartilage popped. With an involuntary spasm his knee banged the side of the duct.
Solo stopped breathing as the thin metallic sound reverberated away. Fortunately for him, the two people in the room outside the duct were talking while it happened.
“Lugo darling, of course I want to be here with you. But I shouldn’t have come. I should be back in Rome.”
“Dearest, this conference or whatever it is that you must attend---it is not in session until Monday, am I not correct?”
“But I should be there anyway. I don’t know why I let you talk me into it, except that I do love you so very much. It’s been a whole new world, falling in love with you. And lately it seems so easy to take the path of least resistance.”
“Your work is taxing you. You deserve a holiday. Besides, I assure you that the travel case you were so concerned about is perfectly safe
locked away in my vault. You saw how thick the walls are. Would I trust a flimsy vault with the heirlooms of the Beladrac family? Of course not!”
Of course not! Thought Napoleon Solo sourly as he watched the tender little scene transpiring in the large main dining room of the villa.
The grille opened into the baseboard of the long, narrow room which was lit here and there by funereal white tapers in old gold candelabra. The flickering light fell across ancient yellowed damask that covered the long table. Crystal and fine china gleamed. The remains of a sumptuous meal could be seen at the places set for the two diners.
A small fire glowed in a stone hearth directly behind Elisabeth d’Angelo. She looked heartbreakingly lovely. Her bare shoulders reflected the fire’s orange gleam. She wore a low-cut strapless evening gown whose color and fit flattered her fine figure. Her sandy-gold hair caught the candle-gleams too. On her left hand, a brilliant over-sized diamond in a silver mounting flashed.
That, Solo remembered, hadn’t been on her finger before. Then he wondered how much time had passed since he left the gate guards. Surely more than five minutes. And his leg was aching more, because of the cramped position in which he lay.
Solo felt the beginnings of a muscle spasm twitching deep within the flesh. He tried to correct his position, couldn’t because of the cramped space. He peered out across the rich carpet at the coy dinner table scene.
Count Lugo Beladrac rose from his place opposite Elisabeth. The girl gave him a misty smile as he circled the end of the table and came to stand behind her. Beladrac looked oddly distinguished in his full set of tails and gleaming white shirt bosom. Despite his ugliness, the man had a certain hypnotic charm. Beladrac closed his massive left hand gently over her exposed shoulder. “Speaking of heirlooms, my dearest, does the ring please you?”
“Please me!” Elisabeth held the diamond up catch the candle light. “No girl could want a more beautiful ring.”
Beladrac bent, pressed his lips to the gleaming crest of her hair. “And no ring could be more handsomely mounted than on your most beautiful of hands, bellissima.”
The Ugly Man Affair Page 6