The Corfu Affair - Phillifent John T. - Страница 20

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"The way I heard it," one of his escort chuckled, "the scenery is kind of outstanding where you're going, too. They say the Countess is a real dish! What's your word?"

"I'll tell you." Solo grinned. "You take Helen of Troy and the Queen of Sheba. Then you add in those two Italian lulus, Gina Lollobrigida and Sophia. Then Brigitte Bardot, the best parts of Jane Mansfield and Liz Taylor. Stir and save the cream, and you aren't even close!"

"I don't wonder you're in a hurry to get back. How's about asking us all out there for a vacation, sometime?"

"The expenses come high, but I'll give it a mention."

The cab swayed, slowed and halted. The small group climbed cautiously out and looked around.

"This is too easy," one of them muttered, as they formed an apparently casual but efficient surrounding escort for Solo. "I was half hoping some of your U.N.C.L.E. buddies would want to horn in. They must be slipping!"

"Just goes to show!" Solo made a throwaway gesture. "Without me—nothing! I bet they don't even know I'm here."

No one offered to call him on the wager. The little party halted at the edge of the landing field.

"This is it," said the man in charge. "Our job is to see you on the plane, that's all. And there it is!"

"Right!" Solo kept his grin, squeezed down on the sudden tension that gripped him, and made a goodbye gesture. "See you again, sometime."

He set away to walk across the open space. His eyes were constantly moving. He saw nothing suspicious. Neither did his sharp-eyed escort. They were not meant to. But he had instincts, and they were tickling him now. Nor were they false. Ever since landing he had been carrying, unwittingly, three unobtrusive electronic bugs, planted on him by disguised agents. From that moment, attentive monitors had listened in on his every word and, by cross-reference, had been able to pinpoint his location at all times.

Those three "fingers" pointed unerringly at him now as he dawdled across the open, so as to be the last passenger aboard. In this moment the haunting, echoing, nightmare "voice" in his head was mercifully silent. He knew "she" was there, though. He had never been able to forget it, right from the moment the needle had first entered his skull. Silent, painless, yet in some uncanny fashion always there, like a never-ending tension in his head.

He was almost to the gangway now, and no one anywhere in sight. The last straggle of passengers had vanished into the dark doorway up there. He swept one last glance around, wishing his nerves would ease off a little. It was hard to be easy and nonchalant when every instinct he had was screaming a warning. He mounted the tread and ran lightly up the slope, pausing at the top to turn and wave to the watchers he couldn't see but knew were there. It was done. He had made it. He turned to step inside.

A slim, very erect figure moved out of a side door and stood facing him, obstructing the way. A man all in black, even to the jet-black hair and Mephistophelean beard. Only the blazing blue eyes and chill grin remained to give him away. Solo stopped as if he had walked into a concrete post. Ice touched his nerves.

"You!" he gasped, and in that second an infernal buzzing started up in his skull, making him cringe, blurring his vision. "You!" he croaked. "But—I shot you, didn't I? In Paris?"

"So you did, Napoleon." The familiar voice came cold and firm over the hellish racket in his skull. "So you did. And now it's my turn!"

Solo snatched for his weapon, but it was also his turn to be too late. The pistol in Kuryakin's fist spat once, and Solo felt the pang, right in the middle of his forehead. It spat again, but he never felt that one at all. He sagged slowly forward, unseeing and uncaring. Kuryakin caught him gently, settled him over one sturdy shoulder, turned and went, heavy-footed, to where the aircraft's emergency escape hatch stood gaping open ready. It was on the far side of the cabin from the watchers. To the pop-eyed passengers he offered a genial grin.

"It's quite all right, folks. This is only a film sequence for a TV show. Won't keep you more than a minute. Fun, isn't it?"

Beyond the open hatch, down there on the concrete, stood a pickup wagon, all ready. A couple of husky agents stood on its roof. They reached up for the Russian's limp burden, lowered it gently down and inside, then made room for him to jump down himself. Seconds later the wagon rolled away, swiftly and silently, to a far corner of the airfield. There a charter plane stood, propellers clicking over. Ten minutes more, and the plane was airborne over Hialeah and heading north.

CHAPTER NINE

PART of the aircraft cabin had been set aside as an emergency operating room. Solo lay inert on the narrow bed as Susan Harvey checked his pulse and respiration and announced herself satisfied. Waverly and Kuryakin were standing anxiously by.

"It's going to be all right," she said. "You planted the anaesthetic darts just right, Illya. He'll be ready in a moment or two."

"You'll be able to locate the exact spot of the insertion?"

"No trouble to that, Mr. Waverly. Here, you can see for yourself." She lifted the unconscious man's head and showed where a small flap of skin and hair could be lifted up easily. "Plastic plug in place. I doubt if I'd have to use instruments, other than a small pair of forceps. Still, I'll scrub up and do it thoroughly."

"All right." Kuryakin sighed and relaxed a shade. "I'll go and get this comic opera makeup off." He ran fingers through the caked dye on his hair and made a face.

"I rather like it dark," she said. "It suits you!"

He glared at her, but the words which came to his tongue were hardly suitable for saying aloud, so he swallowed them and went limping away to the aircraft's tiny washroom. Waverly lingered, but his thoughts had gone far beyond the operation.

"You anticipate no difficulty in removing this gadget from Mr. Solo's brain, but can you give any estimate as to whether it might have produced any permanent effect?"

"That's something I won't be able to say until we've had a full-scale check-up. Not until we get back to a proper laboratory. The possibilities are immense, and I've nothing at all to go on. Most obvious, of course, is the risk of infection, but I imagine the Countess would be too good a surgeon to make that kind of mistake. There may, also, be localized brain damage. Most probable, I would say, is some kind of mental disturbance, and that is quite outside my field."

"I see. Thank you for being candid, Miss Harvey. I'll leave you now to do what you must. Keep him under sedation until we can lay on a proper checkup."

Waverly went away to his cabin, there to activate a radio link which disturbed a quiet, urbane-looking man who was at that moment leaning back in a seat in the very aircraft Solo had been booked to fly in. At the faint bleat of his communicator he stood up and made his way briskly to the washroom, there to pull out his instrument and answer,

"Crawford White here."

"Everything went as planned, Mr. White. You know what to do now. When you change planes in Rome you will be bothered by the Rome police, you will make a break, escape from them, and then go to ground. It has all been prepared. You will be Mr. Solo until you receive a further order from

"I have all that, Mr. Waverly."

"Good. You may now remove the lead from your module and go ahead as planned. No more communication with us by this channel. Be alert for signals from Corfu, and reply accordingly. Out!"

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