[The Girl From UNCLE 01] - The Birds of a Feather Affair - Avallone Michael. Страница 4

She toed the door inward gently, body to one side of the barrier. Light spilled out from the flat but there was no burst of gunfire or welcome of any kind. She eased herself inside, with a deft plunge to the floor, her hand leveling the black patent leather bag. A pressure on the metal clasp and the bag could fire a .32 caliber bullet.

Rising, she felt a trifle foolish.

Slate's modest little flat was as familiar as ever. The same old green butterfly chairs, the 1919 secretary by the window that faced the street and the convertible couch. There was nothing else to the apartment except for a lean-to kitchen—and numerous closets. Slate had an enormous appetite for everything but food. The confirmed bachelor bought all his clothes on Carnaby Street and one of the closets was a veritable warehouse of tweeds and loud weskits. Another contained a guitar, and stacks of rock-and-roll records. In line with an inverse snobbery, belied by his indolent manner of speech and languorous movement, a third closet secreted almost everything that an RAF veteran might find worth keeping. Ever since Slate had transferred from London Headquarters to New York, he had tried to keep England with him wherever he went. But his love of women, his passion for sports cars, his Cambridge attainments and his Olympic ski skills, marked him for the international man of the world that he was. April had always been fond of him.

The bed had not been made.

Mark Slate was nowhere to be seen.

But there was a woman sitting in the green butterfly chair facing the front door from the far side of the room. A woman staring at the floor as if her life depended on the fixity of her gaze.

April froze where she was, the handbag still pointed like a gun.

There was no time to wonder about the woman. About her flaming red hair, her wide shelf of breasts or her long white legs thrusting from a beige sheath skirt. The rising and falling of that bosom, straining against a cashmere sweater, said it all.

The striking redhead was a complete stranger, whom April had never seen before. She did not stir, but her eyes were popping with fright, her complexion was paler than a sheet and she was strained back in the chair, unable to take her eyes off the floor. Rigid in the grip of some all-enveloping terror, April thought, for she had seen that look before. Her eyes followed the line of the redhead's vision until it reached the point where there was no need for questions. She now knew why the woman was incapable of uttering a sound. Or a whisper.

The worn crimson carpet of Mark Slate's floor had taken on a new design. Coiled like a length of artistic rope, blending with the pattern of the linoleum, lay a reptile. It had such magical contour and color that one might have paused to admire rather than fear.

Somehow, inexplicably, impossibly, a fer de lance was snaking along the floor toward the redhead's exposed legs. There was barely another yard and a half to cover. The triangular head was poised, the forked tongue flicking. The ropelike body danced and weaved. The woman's eyes bulged. Corded muscles stood out in her slim throat.

April raised the handbag and sighted carefully.

The target was small, no larger than an egg, and more than ten feet away, but there was no time left. The girl from U.N.C.L.E. moved fast.

As the fer de lance streaked across the carpet, its snaky body uncoiled and raised high now, and the forked tongue lancing out of the venomous, fanged mouth, the handbag in April's fingers exploded with a coughing splat of sound. The woman in the chair collapsed.

Noise echoed around the room, gobbling up echoes.

The fer de lance's ugly head vanished in a blaze of gunfire. The shapely balance of the lovely rope twisted on the worn carpet and was still. April dropped the scorched handbag and stepped over the snake to examine the woman.

She had fainted. April left her momentarily and hurriedly closed the door of the flat, locking it this time on the bolt-latch. Where in thunder was Mark Slate and what did this all mean? April felt her New England gorge rising. If Slate had merely been daisy-plucking and somehow the snake was part of some prank that had gone amiss—

No answers were forthcoming. A quick search of the room and the kitchen revealed nothing awry. It simply looked as if Slate had left the apartment without converting the bed back into a couch and locking the front door. April studied the windows. Nothing but the normal flow of bustling traffic stirred below. Gunfire could have been lost amidst all the hubbub but she couldn't be sure.

She realized bitterly that her English colleague had always been an enigma. U.N.C.L.E. often found it expedient to draw agents from other countries. April had known Slate only as a dedicated, conscientious agent, and there was no question of his loyalty. To April he had always been a big brother, preferring to get his kicks with other girls. That was all well and good but—

The redhead was stirring.

April walked over to her chair.

She was sobbing now, head back, breathing fiercely. Her gorgeous figure was slowly being released from the grip of terror. April gave her time to unwind, as she examined the high-cheeked, full-lipped, sensual face. Was this Mark Slate's kind of woman? April admitted that she really didn't know that either. April was a 34x22x34 brunette, but Mark had never laid a hand on her. Or was this one of Them—caught in a web of her own making?

The woman's eyes met hers suddenly. April gauged her age as somewhat short of the Thirty league.

"If you hadn't come when you did—" The woman shuddered, her voice, in which April detected a continental accent, fading.

"Dead lady spy?" April finished the sentence for her.

The woman shook her head violently, the mass of red hair tumbling down her shoulders. "I don't know what you mean—who are you, anyway?"

April's smile was friendly but her eyes were cold.

"Oh, no, Sweetie. My turn to curtsy, your turn to bow. Who are you?"

The redhead licked her lips, seeing for the first time the dead carcass of the fer de lance only two yards from where she sat.

"Arnolda Van Atta. I'm a translator at the UN. Oh, my God—" She put red-painted fingers to her eyes and shuddered again. "I never dreamed that Mark was mixed up in things like this!"

"Mark?" April said lightly. "Who's Mark?"

"Mark Slate," the woman said from her muffled mouth. "He lives here. We're friends. I stopped by to see him. The door was open. Then as I was in here, deciding to wait for him—you see, I was certain he may have just gone for cigarettes in the candy store downstairs—that, that—thing—"

"I get the picture. You were a lady-in-waiting and the snake walked in. Look at me when I'm talking to you, Miss Van Atta. I must talk to you. I want to watch your eyes as you answer."

That seemed to register like a slap in the face. Arnolda Van Atta's face flamed angrily. She glared up at April.

"Who are you to ask so many questions? You're acting like a policeman." Her eyes were bold and challenging but April stared her down. Decoys were nothing new in the espionage game. And a pretty face was always to be suspected. But a fer de lance as a death weapon was indeed an innovation. Especially in twentieth-century Manhattan. And this classy chick would have been right up Mark Slate's street.

"I am Mark Slate's dearest friend," she said evenly. "His not being here bothers me. I wish you could make my mind happy about his well-being. I just love the way he plays the guitar."

"I can't—I don't know about his comings and goings."

"You'll forgive my bad manners, I know, but I don't believe you."