The Splintered Sunglasses Affair - Leslie Peter. Страница 30

Not too long, probably. But whereas, as Carlsen had surmised, he was conditioned, Solo was not. And when he himself broke and wanted to talk, the things he said would be things implanted subconsciously in his mind by a New York psychiatrist attached to the Command. When Solo broke and they injected the drugs, he would simply tell them what they wanted to know.

It was the uncertainty and not the pain that would break them, though. Carlsen had been right, damn him! Stretched there as humiliatingly as a specimen on a slide, the flesh tensed for the cold caress of spray that might or might not come, the shock that might or might not come with it... it was hardly a situation that called for rejoicing!

Water hissed suddenly into action as the sprinkler jingled into movement. A wedge of light opened into the dark and then vanished as the door opened and closed. In the instant of illumination, he saw Lala Eriksson slip into the cellar. She had put on a black raincoat over her slacks and she was busy about the generator and the sprinkler.

Cold mist trailed over Kuryakin's legs, but there was no shock, mild or violent—that time.

A pencil of light from a pocket torch lanced the gloom. Footsteps splashed across the cellar floor and stopped somewhere just behind him. Again and again the spray washed across his body. But there was still no shock.

The girl was on one knee by the iron ring to which his right hand was attached. He heard the rustle of the raincoat as she moved. When he craned his head over his shoulder, he could see highlights sliding over the contours of the polished proof material sheathing her body.

An instant later, there was a sharp snick and his hand was free.

"What the devil... ?" Illya began.

"Shhhhhh!" The girl's whisper was urgent. "Don't forget the tape!... And you're supposed to be getting electric shocks, so if you could groan a bit it would help."

The Russian uttered a hoarse cry and then another. The light beam stabbed down towards his feet. Again the girl crouched, a strange figure shining wetly in the diffuse light as the spray twisted this way and that. And then he was completely free, sitting up damply on the cold floor, trying to massage life back into his limbs.

Another three minutes, and they were manhandling the unconscious body of Napoleon Solo out of the door and into a dimly lit passageway. Kuryakin gave a final realistic cry of pain and closed the cellar door.

"We'll be all right for ten or fifteen minutes," the girl whispered. "Even if they do listen to the tape so early, they'll just think I've left a gap in the 'treatment'; they'll be expecting that."

"I don't wish to seem ungrateful—but what the hell goes on?"

Lala Eriksson grinned, her face suddenly impish in the dim light. "Like Giovanna, I belong to the S.I.D.," she said. "But whereas she was using the S.I.D. as a cover for her membership of Thrush, I'm doing exactly the opposite—using my Thrush association to mask the fact that I'm with the S.I.D.! Giovanna doesn't know I belong, of course; but we've been watching her... and Mr. Carlsen's unsavory menage... for months!"

Kuryakin tried to laugh, but he was shivering so much with cold and with reaction that all he managed was a kind of steam-engine stutter.

"I'm so sorry!" The girl was all contrition. "You must be perished. Your clothes are here in this cupboard. Mr. Solo's too. I don't suppose he'll be coming round yet, will he?"

"I doubt it. He must have been knocked out a full hour after I was, and I've only been conscious quite a short while. Since Carlsen came in."

Lala bit her lip. "That's going to make it awkward. We've got very little time, you see. Any time after the next ten minutes, Carlsen or Giovanna may realize you're not in the cellar—and that tips them off that it's me that's responsible. If we could possibly get Solo unseen to a car, though, and I could bluff my way through the gates before we were spotted, we might..."

She broke off abruptly and, signalling the Russian to help, began feverishly to dress Solo in the clothes she took from the cupboard. Illya felt anxiously in the breast pocket as they eased the jacket over his shoulders. The sunglasses—the vital link in the chain that would strangle Thrush's plans for Europe—were still there! Hurriedly, he put on his own clothes. Together, they manhandled the unconscious man up a flight of stairs, through a doorway and along a short passage. At the double doors which blocked off its end, the girl held up her hand for silence. "My car is just outside here," she whispered. "If we can get him into it without being spotted, we might just make the gates and crash through before anyone realizes... "

Kuryakin eased back the catch and inched one of the doors open while Lala supported Solo's sagging figure. Gradually, the hairline of daylight widened until finally he could peer through into the open air.

The doors gave out on to a cobbled yard beside the garage at the back of the house. On the far side of the yard, a high wall sheltered the kitchen garden; behind it were the stables—underneath which, presumably, was the cellar in which they had been imprisoned—and at the front, the drive ran past the long, low elevation of the house itself. The Lancia convertible was parked about five yards from the doors, with a clump of oleanders masking it from windows in the house.

But between them and the car loomed the broad shoulders of one of the guards. He was standing with his back to them, his machine pistol at the ready, staring along the drive.

The Russian motioned the girl to come and look. Gently, she lowered Solo to the floor and joined him at the door. She gave one comprehensive glance at the scene outside, sketched a brief pantomime with one hand, and then jerked the door noisily open, "Brockman!" she called. "Here!"

The guard turned slowly round. His brutish face creased into a frown. "Was ist?" he demanded suspiciously, approaching the door.

"One of the prisoners below," Lala said agitatedly. "He's... come and look. Quick!"

The big man snicked back the safety catch on his weapon, bent his head and strode through the doorway. Lala was already at the head of the stair beckoning.

Kuryakin had obediently cached himself in the deep shadows behind the open door. Now, as soon as the guard had passed through, he stole up behind the man, poised on one foot, and slammed his other heel down as hard as he could on the butt of the F.N. where it protruded between the torpedo's arm and body.

The big pistol clattered to the ground as the gunman whirled round with a snarl of astonished rage.

Before he could voice his alarm, Kuryakin had danced in close, his forearm held across his chest, his fingers extended. Like a cobra striking, the flat of the hand darted out once, twice, in a deadly karate chop to the guard's throat. The man staggered. He uttered a strangled grunt—and he would certainly not be able to cry for help for some minutes!—but he was tough. He did not fall. Choking, he rushed at the slender Russian with outstretched arms and seized him in a bear hug. Illya tried every dirty fighting trick he knew. He butted the man's nose with his forehead, he stamped on his toe, he hacked his shin, he brought up one knee. But the torpedo was unbudgeable. Purple in the face, wheezing, he merely increased the pressure.

Inexorably, the arms tightened around Kuryakin like steel bands. His spine felt as though it was about to snap. His own arms, pinioned to his sides in that vice-like embrace, were seized with cramp.

It was when his senses had begun to reel that he resorted to the oldest of all tricks and went abruptly limp.