[Magazine 1966-­08] - The Cat and Mouse Affair - Davis Robert Hart. Страница 19

The wide grounds of the presidential palace were silent and shadowed in the night. Illya Kuryakin glided silently from tree to tree, closer always toward the palace. Men in uniform patrolled the grounds—men not in army uniforms but in black uniforms!

Illya crept and crawled until he reached the cover of the thick bushes that surrounded the palace. He moved through the bushes around the palace, sinking out of sight from time to time as soldiers passed in groups of two. He reached the kitchen door he had noticed earlier. It was locked. With one of his picklocks he opened the door and slid inside.

Illya moved along the dark halls. There were voices. He entered the enormous entry hall of the palace. The voices came from the room where the tribunal met. Illya cat-footed to the door and looked in. Chairman Ramirez was there with most of the other members.

But both O'Hara and Boya, the labor leader, were not there.

Illya turned away and moved silently through the other downstairs rooms. He did not find what he was searching for. From the rear of the house he went up the service stairs to the second floor. He saw a line of light far off at the end of the long upstairs corridor that was as wide as the corridor of a grand hotel, and carpeted with deep carpet.

The light came from a room at the opposite end of the palace from the room where the tribunal met below, a room that showed no light from the outside or Illya would have seen it. He started along the hall and saw the guard.

The man in the black uniform was seated in a chair between Illya and the room that showed light. He held a submachine gun across his lap, and was tilted back in the chair, cleaning his nails with a long trench knife.

At his feet was a small black box that had to be a radio.

There was no way past the guard, and no way to creep up on him silently enough. If Illya shot the man with a sleep dart, the chair would go out and there would be noise. In addition, his ears told him that the radio was switched on! It was a transmitter, and any sound would be heard at the other end, wherever that was.

Illya looked around. He was near the door of a room that showed no light beneath it. He went into the room and crossed it to the window. As he remembered, a narrow ledge of decoration ran around the palace at this height. He opened the window and climbed out onto the ledge.

Flat against the building in the dark, he inched like a fly on the wall toward the window of the room where the guard sat—he had noticed that the guard was practically against the door of the room. As he inched his way he saw the soldiers pass below, but they did not look up, and, luckily, this night clouds covered the moon.

Illya reached the room he wanted and went in through the window. He crossed the room to the door. His move had to be fast and soundless. He took another small capsule from his pocket, took a deep breath, and jerked the door open. He was through the door and on the man in a second.

The guard leaped up. There was no sound on the deep pile carpet. The chair came away from the wall. The man half-turned toward him. Illya squeezed the capsule, caught the man, and dragged him into the room. He came back out, closed the door, and listened.

There had been no sound at all.

The radio transmitter still hummed faintly under the chair. Illya stepped past and went to the door that showed light. There were voices inside and a large keyhole. Illya bent down to look. He saw them through the keyhole. Two men and a woman, laughing and drinking champagne from a row of bottles in ice buckets. He could see no one else.

One of the men was the tall Premier M.M. Roy, the Lion of Zambala. The woman seemed vaguely familiar. Then she turned and he saw her face. For a moment he did not recognize the beautiful face. Then Solo's description came to him -Jezzi Mahal!

The woman laughing now, drinking champagne with Premier M.M. Roy, was Jezzi Mahal. The woman who had killed Inspector Tembo! The woman who was Colonel Brown's girl-friend! The woman who had been so deeply involved in the plot against the premier! The woman who now leaned on the tall, laughing premier, who turned up her beautiful face and kissed M.M. Roy!

And the third man, who raised his glass in a toast inside the guarded room, was Ahmed Bengali! All three of them laughed together—and Illya knew what they laughed at.

THREE

Illya kicked in the door, and stood there with his U.NC.L.E. Special covering all three of them. For a minute they stood with their champagne glasses raised, laughter still on their lips.

"Let me in on the joke," Illya said. "I enjoy a good laugh."

Premier M.M. Roy was a very well-trained diplomat. Shocked as he must have been, as much as the gaping mouths of the woman and Bengali showed they were, the tall premier managed a cool smile.

"Ah, Mr. Kuryakin. What a pleasant surprise. I thought you were on your way home."

"You were supposed to think that, Your Excellency," Illya said.

"So I gather," Roy said. "May I ask why? And just what you are doing in my private rooms with that weapon? The guard—"

"Is asleep," Illya said bluntly. "I'm afraid it was necessary to make you think you had fooled us."

"Fooled you?" Roy said, for the first time a faint edge of something coming into his voice.

"With the coup business," Illya said. "It wasn't done badly, but a trifle clumsily, I'm afraid. Especially your friend Bengali, there. He shouldn't have been quite so on-the-spot to be sure that we came back safely with our news of the coup by Colonel Brown."

Roy placed his champagne glass on a table. "I see."

"And he really should never have used our names. That was a bad mistake. How could he know our names? Even you did not know our names."

Roy looked sadly at Bengali, who was now quite pale. The dark security man began to stammer. Roy sighed.

"Really, Ahmed, you should have been more careful," Roy said.

The tall premier looked at Illya. "Well, just what do you have in mind?"

"I think the OAS will be most interested in a premier who fakes a coup so that he can declare a crisis and martial law. I presume you intended to liquidate Zamyatta and Colonel Brown at some convenient time after the heat had cooled," Illya said. "The relation between yourself and Miss Mahal will fascinate them. I imagine Bengali will tell us all."

The dark security man swore. "Why, you -"

"Yes, I imagine he would," Roy said. "Just what do you think 'all' may be, Mr. Kuryakin?"

"You faked attempts on your life, killed your own security chief. I expect Mura Khan was too honest. Bengali here will be more pliable. I assume that Bengali arranged much of the fake assassinations, the bombs, all the rest.

"I also expect that Nathan Bedford had seen Mr. Bengali, so he had to be killed. Did you do that, too, Bengali?"

"I'll do better with you, Kuryakin!" Bengali said.

"The purpose was to convince the world that Zambala was about to experience a coup and perhaps a civil war. You knew that the OAS, and the United States, would never stand for that here. You would expose the coup, prevent it, and be in complete charge for much longer than any election would allow."

The premier laughed. "But, Mr. Kuryakin, why would I do all that when my government was in no danger?"

"I think to create a crisis. You would be rid of all threats of an election loss, and you would create a sensitive area in Zambala, a crisis in which you could again be the hero."

"Not good enough, Mr. Kuryakin. Not at all," Roy said.

Illya shrugged. "What does it matter? Perhaps you are just insane. The facts speak for themselves. You did it, and we can prove it now. When we tell the world, I think there will be a new government in Zambala."