The Unfair Fare Affair - Leslie Peter - Страница 15

"Okay then," the agent said. "See you midnight. What way do I come in?"

"The way you came today. There'll likely be plenty of boyos about on Sint Pietersstraat, and you'll be able to get down to the towpath all right. Just make sure nobody actually sees you go in the archway, that's all."

"Okay," Solo said again. "See you."

He followed the girl into a short passageway and then through two steel doors. In the space between the doors, a tall man with long sideburns and a dark moustache sat at a table cleaning a Walther PPK with a brown butt. Solo recognized the bodyguard Manuel O'Rourke (as he was then) had had in Rio. "Hello, Raoul," he said as he passed. "Nice to see you again."

The tall man looked up and bowed gravely from the waist. He said nothing.

Beyond the second steel door was a tiny office. And outside the office was the foyer of a typical commercial hotel—full of brown paint, out of date brochures and posters, dispirited artificial flowers and faded notices covered in food stains. Through a door at one side they could hear the brawling hubbub of a crowded bar.

Once they were in the street, the girl took Solo's arm. "I like dark men for a change," she said. "It's not many people he sees personally, you know. What do you do, Mr. Solo?"

The agent grinned. "Let's say," he mused, "that if Mynheer van der Lee sells information, then I acquire the same commodity—preferably without paying for it!"

"You are a detective?"

"No—just an information gatherer. There's one item you could supply, Annike."

"Certainly," the girl said, pressing the taut curves of her young body against him as they walked. "If I can. What do you want to know?"

"I want to know what time you have to be back."

"Back with Hendrik? Why, not until midnight. I'm off- duly now."

Solo looked down into her flushed face. There was a mischievous twinkle in the blue eyes, a mocking tilt to her mouth. "That's far too much of a coincidence to be passed up," he said. "Are clients permitted to date the staff?"

"I see no objection if the staff is not on duty," Annike said demurely.

"Fine! Will you come with me then? We'll paint the town red until midnight—when, like all princesses, you'll have to leave the ball. But until then, we'll have a ball! What do you say?"

"I should like that very much," the girl said.

"Swell. Where shall we go then? And I warn you, I may make a pass!"

"I seldom wear glasses," Annike laughed. "Would you like to go to Scheveningen? It's only two miles. We can walk by the sea—and I'd like to try the food at the Bali. I'm crazy about Indonesian food. We could have an early dinner and go to one of the shows, yes?"

"That would be fine. Let's grab a cab right away."

"My car is here," the girl said, stopping beside a Fiat 850 coupe in an unusual shade of mustard yellow, which was parked by the sidewalk. "But where are you staying? Do you have a topcoat? There will be a wind—and it gets cold after dark, you know."

"You're so right!" Solo said. "My hotel is only a couple of blocks away. If you don't mind making a detour, I'll run upstairs and get one while you wait."

He left the girl, looking remarkably voluptuous despite her slender build, in the chic little fastback while he took the elevator to his room.

He washed his hands and face, splashed Lanvin's Monsieur Figaro on his forehead and his wrists, combed his hair, dabbed himself dry with a towel and, after a final look in the glass, went into the bedroom to fetch his coat from the closet.

At first he thought it was gone. Then he realized it had slipped off the hanger and was lying in a crumpled heap on top of his shoes on the floor. With an exclamation of annoyance, he leaned in to pick it up.

The nylon stocking filled with wet sand made no noise as it swung down to meet the nape of his neck.

The floor cracked open into an abyss of darkness, and Solo fell through and went on down.

Chapter 7

Visitors From The East

THE SMALL MAN with the gray crewcut paid off his cab in front of a row of seedy brownstones a block from the East River. He looked sharply once in each direction and crossed the sidewalk to a tailor's shop in the middle of the row. An erect man with a firm, springy step, he walked in his belted gabardine raincoat and his pepper-and-salt suit as though he would be more at home in a uniform. He opened the door of the shop and went in.

Behind the crumbling neighborhood facade, the steel and glass and concrete fortress of U.N.C.L.E.'s headquarters lay hidden––buttressed additionally, like a row of volumes between bookends, by a public garage at one extremity of the block and a restaurant and key club at the other. There were four entrances to the place (and rumor postulated a fifth, known only to Alexander Waverly, though nobody had ever heard him refer to it). The one used the most was for the Command's clerical and technical staff. It was gained through the washrooms of the garage. The entrance used by official visitors was at the far end of the block, through a suite of offices above the key club. There was a water gate—a subterranean channel cut through to the basement level from the East River. And the last entrance was that reserved for U.N.C.L.E.'s Enforcement Officers, the cream of the Command's operatives. It was through the tailor shop of Del Florio in the middle of the block.

The man with the gray crewcut was not, however, an Enforcement Officer. He had in fact never been on the street before. Or in New York. Or, for that matter, in the United States of America. He was just very well briefed.

He strode to the back of the shop, nodded genially to Del Florio, who was occupied with his pants pressing machine, and went into a fitting cubicle. The old man was in his shirtsleeves, tape around his neck. Mechanically, he returned the greeting and pressed the hidden lever at the side of the presser that released the controls operating the secret door inside the cubicle. And then, phoenixlike, he straightened up among the clouds of steam, his brow wrinkled in puzzlement. The gray man had carried such conviction in his manner that Del Florio had assumed he was a new enforcement Officer, one he had not seen before. They came in all the time.

But there was an established routine for new operatives the first time they used the entrance. And the gray man had not followed it. Del Florio pressed another button, which had been installed for just this purpose. If it had been labeled, the label would have read PRVISIONAL ALERT.

Inside the cubicle, the small man hauled down on a certain coat hook projecting from the back wall, waited for the concealed door to swing aside, and walked through into the passage leading to the Command's reception foyer.

The Nigerian girl seated at Reception had already seen him coming on the closed-circuit TV screens suspended above her desk that monitored all entrances. Even without the winking orange indicator that Del Florio had put into action, the defenses of the place would have been ready to meet the intruder. Passages leading to the three other entrances had been automatically blocked off by steel bulk heads. The corridor to the secretariat and the stairs leading to the other floors would have been similarly cut. The power supply to the elevators would have been cut, and there would be an orange light winking on every desk in the building while the provisional alert lasted.

Little of this showed, however. The man with the gray crewcut saw, as he walked up to the desk, only the dark figure of the girl and a pair of uniformed guards with machine pistols standing one on each side. It might have been—in fact, it was—what any normal visitor would see when he approached Reception. And if the splendid figure of the Nigerian girl was a little more tense than usual, it didn't show from the far side of the desk.