[Magazine 1966-­09] - The Brainwash Affair - Davis Robert Hart - Страница 4

"Don't forget you're a lady, Gizelle," Illya warned, "Or I'll have to."

Gizelle sprang the blade free, flicking it open. At this moment she walked into Illya's fingers, driven short and hard into her throat.

"You left me no alternative, ma'am," Illya apologized.

Gizelle retched, dropped her knife. She sank to the pavement on her knees, hands pressed to her throat, face livid.

Illya jerked his head toward the Citroen, opening the door as he did.

Solo however, tossed him the keys. "I want Albert to recall this evening for a long time," he said curtly.

Illya scowled. "It's not like you to let rage suspend reason, Solo."

"I've never been quite this angry."

"You're making a mistake, So lo. Let's get out of here."

Fatigue and outrage made Solo hoarse. "I think it would be a mistake to let them off so lightly."

Illya slid across the seat under the wheel. He inserted the key in to the ignition switch, watching Solo through the windshield.

Solo lifted the car hood. On the pavement the Arab Gizelle remained crouched, watching in anguish. Solo hefted the Moor, draped him across the fender, both his gloved hands extended over the engine block.

Solo thrust the lead-lined gloves over the spark-plugs, lowered the hood across Albert's back.

"Start the car," he ordered.

Illya turned the key. The car motor sprang to life. Albert screamed; the hood was thrown upward. Albert lunged away, falling across the walk. He trembled all over. People turned, staring.

Calmly Solo lowered the hood, secured it.

He got into the ear beside Illya.

"Now let's go," he said.

Illya laughed. "Vengeance is a great thing with you, isn't it, Napoleon?"

Solo shrugged and laid his head on the seat rest. He stared at the ceiling of the compact. "My grandmother told me that if I always vented my rage on the objects of my rage, I wouldn't build up frustrations and end with a tic."

Illya reversed the car, turned it toward the Paris exit. "She must have been a great old lady. Wonder what she'd say we should do about a car that is following us?"

Solo sat up, checked through the rear window.

"Lose it," he advised.

"Your grandmother was a crunchy old girl, wasn't she?" Illya said, flooring the accelerator.

"She was all we could afford at the time," Solo replied. "And we wouldn't have been here without her."

The car behind them made no pretense it was not trailing the Citroen.

When Illya touched the brake at the highway entrance, the convertible slapped against the rear bumper.

Illya raced forward, turning in to the sparse truck traffic of early morning.

The convertible swung out behind them. Solo twisted on the bucket seat, watching it. He touched at the U.N.C.L.E. Special in its Berns-Martin shoulder holster.

"How many in the car?" Illya inquired, gripping the wheel with both hands.

"The top is up," Solo said. "Too dark to see. We know at least there's a maniac at the wheel."

"Got a bit of sticky news for you," Illya said after a moment. "Sixty seems to be our top speed."

The convertible pounced forward alongside them. Illya jerked the wheel, taking the Citroen to the edge of the road, slamming on brakes and then gunning it as the convertible whipped toward them.

"Couple of vegetable trucks," Solo said. "There's room for us between them. We won't make any time, but it's the safest spot I can think of at the moment."

"That convertible won't let us pass that rear truck." Illya protested.

"Perhaps not on the left," Solo agreed calmly.

Illya's blue eyes widened. "Pass on—the right?"

"My grandmother's watchword was resourcefulness, Illya."

"I wish she were driving."

"So do I, but we can't have everything."

There was the scream of metal as the convertible nudged at the Citroen's rear fender.

Illya swerved the car hard to the right, kept going. The Citroen struck the road shoulder, bouncing and chattering.

The trucker ahead, catching a glimpse of the compact in his off-mirror, struck his horn violently. His Gallic curses turned the dawn a savage blue.

Illya swung in ahead of the truck, missing its huge right front wheel by inches.

Both Illya and Solo grabbed leather, because at this same instant, the convertible whipped from the left into the narrow space between the two trucks.

Horns blared, brakes squealed. Only the swearing, weeping driver in the truck behind averted a collision by stomping on his brakes, fading behind them as if carried away on the wind.

Illya muttered something in a language that Solo didn't understand, and that perhaps Kuryakin didn't understand, either, words invented for this fearful moment.

The convertible bore in upon them, forcing them off the pavement.

"One small last trick remaining in my bag," Illya said half to himself.

He jerked hard right on the wheel and floored the gas pedal, whipping the Citroen to the inside of the lead truck, as he had done the first one.

They saw the convertible, still pulling into them, try to straighten. At this moment, the truck driver, alerted by horns and brakes behind him earlier, now slammed on his brakes instinctively.

The convertible in that brief instant raced toward the rear of the slowing truck on collision course.

At the last moment it was wheeled hard right, turning at a forty-five degree angle, going off the pavement, across the shoulders, down a ditch between stately chestnut trees, smashing hard into a five-foot hedgerow.

Illya battled the Citroen back into the inside lane of the highway. His knuckles showed gray on the steering wheel. His mouth was a taut line and he breathed heavily through flared nostrils.

He kept his stricken gaze on the highway ahead.

Solo turned on the seat, watching the convertible disappear in the distance behind them. "I was just wondering—"

"Yes, Napoleon?"

"Where could we get breakfast at this hour? You and my grandmother have worked me up one ring-a-ding of an appetite."

FOUR

SOLO AND ILLYA walked into the offices of Lester Caillou in the Paris banking district at ten that morning.

The reception room, done in contemporary French styling, was vacant when they entered. A chair was pushed back from the receptionist's desk. The typewriter was uncovered. A telephone lay off its cradle.

Subdued voices washed in from the connecting office.

Illya wandered about the room, gazed through a window at the view of the gardens and the river beyond. Solo rapped at the inner door.

Instantly, the voices ceased. Presently, a tall young woman in tight skirt, white blouse, hair piled dark and high in a lacquered roll, came through the door and closed it carefully behind her.

"What do you wish?" she asked in French. Her face was pale.

"We wish to see Monsieur Lester Caillou," Solo said.

She tossed a troubled gaze across her shoulder, attempted a smile that made her wan cheeks more bleak. "M'sieur Caillou arrives at eleven o'clock."

Solo nodded. "Then we'll wait."

"Could I be of some service?" the girl asked, perspiring.

"But certainly," Illya said. "Tell M'sieur Caillou we are here."

"He arrives at eleven," the girl repeated, in French.

"She's lying," Illya said to Solo in English. "She's really lovely, though."

"Yes." Solo gazed admiringly at the secretary. "I'd say about forty-five—"