The Finger in the Sky Affair - Leslie Peter - Страница 27

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The third floor of the house boasted only three doors. Two of them, on the side of the building nearest the street, stood open—to reveal in the intermittent reflection of fireworks admitted through the uncurtained windows a bathroom and what looked like a miniature laboratory. Behind the third, which was closed, lay the room with the picture window, the operations room from which four T.C.A. Tridents had been sent crashing to their doom...

From this landing—Illya saw in the light of a blue-green flare—only a ladder led upwards to the attics. Gun at the ready, he swarmed aloft and disappeared through the open trapdoor in the ceiling.

The crude Proven?al armchair to which Solo was bound had its back to the door, and the first he knew of the Russian's presence was the hand that fell warningly on his shoulder.

"How long have we got?" Solo whispered urgently as Illya sawed through the electric flex clamping his wrists, elbows, knees and ankles to the wooden arms and legs.

Kuryakin glanced at his watch. "The plane is due to land in five and a quarter minutes, Napoleon," he said.

Solo rose to his feet, massaging the life back into his cramped limbs. "God, we have to move fast," he said. "And we can't afford to go into that operations room before we've accounted for the others. How many are there left, do you know?"

"The man and woman who were here with you, Fr?hlich—and probably one other. I've already—er—looked after one guard on the front door."

"Good. But the trouble is, we'll have to do it all in complete silence—the slightest sign of a struggle would tip Helga off..."

Together, they turned towards the door.

Larsen stood there with a Luger, the big gun steady in his dirty hand.

"Okay, you guys," he snarled. "So now it's a confederate, is it? Back up there—now. We'll see just who the hell you are..."

Balletically, Illya kicked straight-legged almost in reflex. The tip of his toe caught the barrel, and the heavy pistol went spinning across the room. As the small, dark man's mouth opened wide in dismay, the Russian chopped flat-handed at his throat, catching him viciously across the Adam's apple as the shout was forming. Solo made a dive to his left and caught the Luger before it could crash to the floor.

Larsen lurched forward, retching for breath, as Illya slammed a left to the pit of his stomach. The dark man doubled up. As his head sank down, Kuryakin grasped hold of the ears and brought his knee sharply up to connect sickeningly with Larsen's face.

The THRUSH man sagged, the two agents catching his inert body and easing it into a chair before it could hit the floor.

"A pity," Kuryakin said as they lowered themselves down the ladder. "I dislike violence..."

Outside the door where the rest of the gang were talking on the floor below, they waited to listen. The Trident was due in four minutes.

"Our timing had better be good on this," Solo whispered. "We've got to give the stuff time to work—and still be in there ready to catch them before they fall!" He produced from a shoulder holster a gun with a long, thin barrel no thicker than a pencil and poked it carefully through the keyhole. Flipping open a cover on the single chamber, he slid in a fragile glass capsule about half the length of a cigarette, closed the cover and pulled the trigger.

There was a faint snap as the powerful spring propelled the capsule into the room on the other side of the door. Illya looked at the luminous face of his watch, waiting while twenty-five seconds ticked away. The intonation of the voices in the room altered, becoming slurred and thick.

"Now!" the Russian called, twisting the handle and throwing open the door.

Holding their breath, the two agents moved quietly and quickly into the room. The shattered fragments of the capsule lay on the tile floor just below a table spread with cards. Two large men were on their feet, swaying drunkenly from side to side. Solo caught one just as he was about to crash face down across the table; Illya seized the other in the act of hauling out a gun from his hip pocket, and waited the few seconds needed before the nerve gas completed its action. Then, together, they lowered the unconscious men to the floor and hurried back to the landing.

"Forty seconds," Kuryakin gasped, dragging the air gratefully back into his lungs. "Anyone that says he can hold his breath for two minutes must be crazy!"

"You can say that again," Solo panted. "But what about the woman: she wasn't there."

The Russian laid a hand on his arm. From two stories below came the sound of a cistern emptying. A door closed and footsteps sounded on the stairs.

Solo and Illya melted back to the floor above and slipped through the open door of the bathroom. The footsteps traversed the landing they had just left and climbed the stairs towards them. In a moment, the woman Celeste appeared, walked along the passageway, opened the door of the operations room opposite, and went in.

A moment later, with Illya close behind him, Solo reopened the door and stepped quietly into the room.

It was a strange sight that met their eyes. Workbenches packed with electronic equipment ran the length of the two side walls. Indicator lights, dials and control knobs studded a panel fronting a complex of valves and intricate wiring; from a curved tube of glass spiraling around a metal core, heavy-insulation leads coiled in every direction. On one side, lights gleamed from the complications of a powerful transmitter.

At the far end of the room, the picture window stood wide to the warm night. In the center of it, the tawny gold of Helga Grossbreitner's hair was burnished by the light from a red bulb overhead. She sat behind a battery of equipment mounted on a heavy tripod and pointing out of the window towards the sea. Basically, this consisted of a four-foot long center section resembling a triple gun barrel, with a square box covered in switches and leads at the operating end and an attachment rather like a magnified camera lens with a long hood at the far end. Immediately above this device was a smaller three-barreled affair—the three tubes like a trio of telescopes of unequal length. Into the slimmest of these, obviously some kind of aiming sight, the girl was squinting as she turned a wheel, aligning the two sets of equipment. At one side, the greenish luminescence of a radar screen showed a moving blip representing the plane whose actual landing lights they could see through the window as it flew low over the sea towards the airport.

Celeste stood behind, gazing out across the dark countryside.

There was a muttered word of satisfaction from Helga. A hairline on the radar screen was coinciding with the nose of the moving blip. Her left hand threw a heavy master switch on the control box. A deep humming mingled with electric cackles filled the room. One of the barrels glowed red.

Solo stepped swiftly forwards, reached over her shoulder, and twirled the wheel, canting the six barrels skywards.

"A three-way laser with a ruby rod range-finder allied to conventional radar—very ingenious, Helga," he said softly.

The girl spun around in her chair, her eyes flashing fire. "Solo!" she exclaimed furiously. "You! But you were supposed to be —"

"On the plane you were about to bring down. I know—but we thought we'd let this be the one that got away. Too many people have died already, my dear. You've had a long enough run as it is."

As the blonde sprang to her feet, her beautiful face a mask of rage, the silenced gun in Illya's hand spat flame. Before the cork-like pop of the explosion had died away, Celeste pitched forward and clattered to the floor, one hand still grasping the butt of the tiny automatic she had been trying to pull from the top of her stocking.

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