The Finger in the Sky Affair - Leslie Peter - Страница 29

Through the archway, a flight of stone stairs led down between tall, narrow buildings to a street.

In the nightmare light he hurried down, flattening himself against a wall, and peered around the corner of the building. The street was obviously one of the village's main thoroughfares, for although it was only about eight feet wide, he could see in the reflected red glow of the floodlights a succession of antique shops, boutiques, souvenir stands and galleries crammed with chocolate-box paintings. As far as he could see, it was empty—but from the far side of a rise in the roadway came the clatter of running feet.

Illya dashed up the slope and paused at the top. From here, the street dipped down again between rows of gimmicky 'restored' houses and then forked—one leg curving away to the right to join the ramparts, the other plunging down to a tunnel-like medieval gateway leading to the outside world. For the first time, too, there were people: several residents were climbing the hill towards him on the way back to their houses, and there was quite a crowd among the cafe tables on the battlement above the gate. Helga was running. A strand of her golden hair had worked loose from the chignon and streamed over her shoulder as she pelted down the incline and vanished through the arched gateway.

As Kuryakin set off after her, he realized that the display must now be over. The red floodlights were out, the smoke was blowing away, and from outside the walls of the town a swelling murmur of applause from thousands of sightseers posted along the terraced vineyards and orange groves grew and grew. There was another sound, too, he realized as he ran down the slope towards the gate—nearer and more urgent: the sound of many voices calling, laughing, shouting in a confused babble just beyond the ancient walls.

A moment later, he burst out from the vaulted tunnel into a scene of extraordinary gaiety. A Proven?al fair filled the small place outside the gate usually reserved for the parking of cars and games of petanque. Booths, kiosks and sideshows jammed the spaces between the buttresses of the old rampart, sprawled across the open space under the plane trees and spilled over into the narrow roadway between La Residence and La Colombe d'Or, St. Paul's world famous hotels. Around and between them seethed a vast throng of people hurling coconuts, buying tickets, pitching quoits, munching cotton candy and ice cream, and packing the counters of shooting galleries in flickering torchlight.

But of Helga Grossbreitner there was no sign.

Illya clattered to a halt at the edge of the crowd, scanning the myriad faces with an exasperated frown. Trying to locate a blonde in black trousers and a white shirt among such a press of holidaymakers was hopeless.

He was about to plunge into the maelstrom when there was a shout above and behind him. Solo and Sherry Rogers were climbing down a stone stairway from the top of the rampart. They presented an arresting sight: the Chief Enforcement Officer of U.N.C.L.E. was soot-streaked and dishevelled, his collar torn and his jacket split; and the girl looked almost comically ill-dressed in a skirt and blouse several sizes too large for her.

"Where is she?" Solo panted as they came up to Kuryakin. "Not among that bunch, I hope."

The Russian nodded unhappily. "She kept me at bay with an automatic," he said. "And by the time I'd made a detour to outflank her, she was just that little bit too far ahead...You made out all right at the house?"

"Yes. It was a bit of a struggle, but we made it. I got Sherry and Celeste out first and then went back for the doorkeeper you slugged. The two plug-uglies we put to sleep had already come to and escaped."

"And Larsen?"

Solo looked at the ground. "Pity about him," he said soberly. "But he was at least a quadruple murderer. By the time I'd tied up Celeste and the doorkeeper, called up Station M to ask for the S?rete boys to come and pick them up, and borrowed some of Celeste's clothes for Sherry, the top two stories were a wall of fire..."

He looked back at the battlements. Above the irregular line of roofs, the sky flickered orange in imitation of the display which had so recently finished. Faintly above the hubbub of the crowd, they heard from the far side of the village the hee-haw bray of a fire engine.

"Never mind," Illya said. "I suppose we had better plunge in among all this and try to find her. We'd better split up..."

Slowly, they forged in among the chattering, laughing crowd, swollen to saturation point now by an ever-growing stream of sightseers flooding down the narrow approach road from the terraces surrounding the town. They were jostled, pushed, shouldered aside, jammed inextricably in phalanxes of people between the booths as the strident cries of barkers and the good-natured banter of tourists in a dozen languages swelled and crashed around them. At one point, when Illya had stopped by a sideshow where people bought a handful of numbered tickets rolled into tubes in the hope of winning a raffle prize, Sheridan Rogers approached him and plucked at his sleeve.

"Illya," she said nervously. "I have to explain—I'm so sorry. That dreadful evening in Haut-des-Cagnes...I'm so ashamed...I was drugged, you see. And then they...they hypnotized me to...to behave like that. Oh, it was awful..."

The Russian looked down at the girl's white, strained face. "That's all right, Sherry," he said uncomfortably. "Forget it, please. I should have realized they were trying either to frighten us off you, or to make us think you were the weak link in the T.C.A. chain..."

"Now roll up, ladies and gentlemen!" a huge woman with hoop earrings was bawling in front of the booth. "Five tickets for one franc. Any ticket with a five or a nine at the end of a number wins a prize. Roll up, roll up and try your luck!"

"Did they harm you—back there in the house?" Illya asked.

"No. They just kept me tied to that table and gave me an injection every few hours. They were going to...they wanted to..." she broke off and began to cry.

"Every ticket ending in a five or a nine wins a prize—There! See: the little girl has won the giant teddy bear!"

A child with pigtails handed over a winning ticket and staggered away hugging the huge toy, her eyes wide in disbelief, as Kuryakin put his arm around Sherry's shoulders. They moved on through the fair, anxiously scanning the faces in the light of the flares.

"Break the bottles with the metal boules, ladies and gentlemen! Three broken bottles doubles your money. Six shots a franc..."

"Coconuts, fine coconuts. Knock off the ones you like..."

"Try your aim with the six-shot repeaters! Five bulls wins a prize—come on, now: only one franc fifty for half a dozen shots..."

They stopped by the shooting gallery as Solo forced his way through a knot of German tourists arguing over a quoit-throwing prize and came towards them. "It's no good," he shouted over the din. "There's not a chance in hell of locating her among this crowd. We'll have to —"

Suddenly, Sherry Rogers screamed, pointing frantically over his shoulder.

Among the cardboard targets and ping-pong balls balancing on jets of water, Helga had appeared behind the counter at the far end of the booth. The long-nosed automatic in her hand was pointing straight at Solo.

Illya exploded into action. Hurling Solo aside as the gun spat flame, he snatched a target rifle from a blue-chinned Proven?al youth who had just loaded it and snapped three quick shots at the girl from THRUSH. Helga disappeared through the curtain at the back of the gallery.