The Copenhagen Affair - Oram John - Страница 18

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He followed her and opened the door. She found herself in a bright, white-enameled hall with a floor of highly polished parquet. Bowls of flowers stood on tables of well-oiled teak. A tall Christmas tree twinkled beside the desk marked RECEPTIONIST.

She said, “Cozy.”

“We try to make it so,” Garbridge said. “This is a maternity home, you know. Though, of course, our doctors and ‘patients’ are all Thrush nominees.”

He waved the Luger again. “Along the hall, please, and into the first room on the right.”

The room was furnished as a study. It had wall-to-wall carpeting in a warm rust shade and spun-glass curtains in rich bronze. The center piece was an antique desk as big as a family dining table, which went with a chair that looked like a throne. On the table there were a heavy silver inkstand, a silver paperknife, and a couple of old glass paperweights that were worth several thousand kroner. Chest-high bookcases around the walls bore figurines and vases of the best Royal Copenhagen period.

Garbridge sat at the desk and put the gun in front of him. He pointed to another chair and said, “Sit down, please. Are you hungry?”

“A little,” Karen admitted.

He picked up a telephone and said, “Ask Sister Ingrid to bring some refreshments. For two, please.” After a short interval a woman came in, carrying a tray of smorrebrod and a bottle of red wine. She was wearing a nurse’s uniform, but she looked as if she had stepped right out of a Pollyanna book. She was small and round and pink-cheeked as a Kewpie doll. She had snow-white hair, pulled sedately into a bun beneath her old-fashioned cap, and her blue eyes twinkled merrily behind steel-bowed spectacles.

She put the tray on the desk in front of Garbridge and poured two glasses of wine. She gave Karen a plate and a knife and fork and put one of the glasses before her. Then she stepped back, bobbed a curtsy, and stood waiting for further orders.

Garbridge said, “Thank you, Sister. That will be all…for the moment.”

She smiled understandingly. The point of her little red tongue popped out and circled her lips. Then she curtsied again and went out of the room.

Garbridge pushed the tray toward Karen. It held open sandwiches of smoked eel, hard-boiled egg crowned with caviar, bacon and asparagus tips, beef with beetroot.

He said, “Please help yourself. I am not hungry. I’ll drink a glass of wine to keep you company.”

She looked at him, puzzled.

“You are an extraordinary man,” she said. “This is hardly the kind of treatment I expected.”

He shrugged. “We are both in the same line of business. Both professionals. The fortunes of war have put you into my hands. There is no reason why we should not be civilized about it. After all”—he smiled bitterly—“I was once a gentleman.”

He rose and walked to the door. “I shall leave you in peace to finish your meal. I must attend to a little urgent business.”

As soon as he had closed the door behind him Karen went over to the windows and examined them. They were double-glazed and there were stout steel bars between the panes.

She crossed to the door. As she had expected, it was locked. There was no hope there. She went back to the table and ate a smoked eel sandwich philosophically.

The phone bell shrilled in the Jacobsen farmhouse, cutting in on the discussion of four very worried men. Viggo went to the instrument and took up the receiver.

He gave his name, listened, then exclaimed, “What? Repeat that, please.”

He turned and looked to where Solo was sitting. He said, “It’s Garbridge. He wants to talk to you.”

Illya said incredulously, “You’re joking, of course.”

Solo took the receiver from Viggo’s hand. He snapped, “Who is this?”

There was no mistaking Garbridge’s voice. It came loud and clear over the wire. It said, “Solo, listen and don’t ask questions. If you interrupt I shall hang up. This is not a discussion. It is an ultimatum.

“Your delightful if impetuous Karen is my guest. I give you my word that she is unharmed and is being well treated.

“You have until seven o’clock tomorrow morning to withdraw your men and clear out of the district without further damage to the mine or its contents.

“If you agree, she will be released. If you do not, I give you my word that she will be dead within the day… and the manner of her death will not be pleasant. I have an expert in such matters.”

The line went dead.

Garbridge replaced his receiver with a satisfied smile and returned to the study. He looked at Karen’s empty plate and the depleted tray of sandwiches. “I am glad you ate well,” he said. “I am afraid you may yet need all your strength.”

He poured another glass of wine for her and resumed his place in the throne-like chair. For a second or two he sat silent, looking at her steadily with those feline amber eyes.

At last he said, “I have been talking to your friend Solo.”

“I don’t believe it. How could you know where he is?”

He made an impatient gesture. “Do you think U.N.C.L.E. has the only efficient intelligence service? It was not hard to figure out that he would have made the Jacobsens his base of operations.

“But that is beside the point. What concerns you is that I have made him a simple, and, I think, generous offer—your life against my machine. Unfortunately, he is a stubborn man. I have a feeling that he may not accept. In that case I trust I can rely upon you to make one final effort to persuade him.” He smiled. “I can assure you that I have no wish to kill you, my dear. I hate the senseless destruction of beauty. But sometimes, alas, there is no other course.”

Karen lit one of the cigarettes he had given her. She was glad to see that the hand holding the match was quite steady. She asked slowly, “What good would my death do you?”

“Frankly, none—except the ignoble satisfaction of revenge.”

“I am expendable,” she pointed out. “A tarveligt, run-of-the-mill agent. Can you really believe that whether you kill me or send me back Solo would cease to hunt you down?”

He shook his head. “I do not expect that, nor have I asked it. I am concerned at this moment only with getting my machine safely away. Like yourself—I am expendable.” He raised his glass and bowed to her mockingly.

She stubbed out her cigarette in a silver ashtray.

“Well, either way, there can be no argument,” she said decisively. “I haven’t the slightest intention of asking Solo to change his plans.”

Garbridge sighed. “That is a pity. But I think you may change your mind.”

He picked up the intercom. “Send Sister Ingrid please.”

“Ah! Sister,” he said, when the little plump woman appeared, “I think it is time we showed our young guest some of our facilities. We might begin with the labor ward, perhaps.”

“Ja, ja vist.” She beamed at Karen, her blue eyes dancing, and held the door wide. “Vaer saa god…”

She bustled ahead down the hall, her tiny feet in their low-heeled shoes clacking over the parquet, and pressed the button for the elevator. They descended two floors into the lower basement, a place of stark, unpainted concrete walls and floors and utter, eerie silence. Happily, the little sister unlocked and flung open a door and pushed Karen through.

“Se!” she announced. “Fodselsstuen!”

Involuntarily Karen gasped. For the first time she felt thoroughly frightened and terribly alone. She prayed that her terror did not show in her face.

Ceiling, floor and walls of the high chamber were entirely covered by panels of soundproofing material. In the center of the floor, directly under powerful operating lamps massed in batteries, was an iron couch from which dangled thick leather straps to secure chest, waist, legs and arms. There were racks of whips and canes, complicated arrangements of ropes, hooks and pulleys, and strange electrical devices whose sinister purpose the girl dreaded to imagine.

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