The Monster Wheel Affair - McDaniel David. Страница 7

Illya was feeling the bag very gently, and examining the zipper with a small magnifying lens. He shook his head slowly. "Quite true," he said. "For instance, I am fairly sure an attempt to open this zipper would result in detonation of the device."

Suzie looked at all the other bags and suitcases. "Haven't you got something here that will take care of it?"

Napoleon shrugged. "We might be able to X-ray it to find out where everything is inside it—but we couldn't be sure that it might not be wired with a small fluorescent screen so the X-rays would trigger it."

"Oh," she said in a small voice, and looked doubtfully across the room at Illya. "Well, what are you going to do?"

"Probe," said the Russian succinctly, producing a long thin knife from somewhere.

He drew the tip of the knife over a short distance on the side of the bag, and continued to stroke the area like a surgeon making a life-and-death incision. Gradually the scratch deepened. In a few seconds, a half-inch gash appeared in the canvas, and he stopped. "Excellent," he said softly, and folded the knife.

He turned, looking over the other bags scattered around the room, spotted one and nodded. From it he withdrew a flat metal box some twelve inches long. He crouched beside the ticking bag and opened the box.

The first thing he withdrew was a long thin tube perhaps ten inches long, with a small cup at one end and an elastic band which Illya slipped over his head, adjusting the cup to one eye. He touched something beside the eyepiece, and the other end of the tube glowed softly. He slipped that end in through the incision.

"All right," Suzie whispered to Napoleon. "What's he doing now?"

"That's a proctoscope—a fiber-optic illuminator. Basically it's a light-pipe with a wide-angle lens and a tiny light on one end, and his eye on the other end. He can look all over the inside now."

Illya's visible eye, which had been closed, opened now and rolled over in the direction of the kit. His free hand slipped out something else long and thin.

"The rest of the kit," Napoleon continued, "is a surgical kit, essentially. Each gadget in there has something different on the end. A gripper, a knife blade, a shear...Surgeons use them for what they call 'keyhole' operations. They can work inside you through little holes; less tissue damage, less of a scar."

Suzie nodded. "When I had my appendix out a few years ago the scar was only about an inch long."

"What do you see in there?" Napoleon asked his partner.

"Wires—a couple of batteries—a large block of something—a timing mechanism..."

"Then it really is a bomb!" Suzie said.

"What did you expect—Big Ben?"

She paused, considering that, and decided to let it pass. "What are you doing now?"

"Clipping wires."

"Oh."

Illya worked in silence for a minute, then said, "This is a fairly sloppy job of bomb-making. The zipper was wired, as I thought, but it wouldn't have gone off if I'd opened it—one of the connections had broken loose. An amateurish job of soldering, too." He paused, manipulating his instruments through the tiny hole. "I think I want a closer look at those batteries. And that detonator mechanism..." He pulled out one tool, picked up another, and continued working. After a few seconds, he let out a long breath, and said, "That's it."

Napoleon took a step forward as Illya stood up slowly and slipped the eyepiece of the proctoscope off his head. "Let's see."

The Russian agent was replacing his tools in their case, fitting each slender, delicate instrument back in the proper clips, and finally closing the lid and fastening the catches. Only then did he slide the zipper back.

The top of the bag opened neatly, and the two U.N.C.L.E. agents bent over it together.

"Look at the wiring. Shoddy," said Illya. "Simply shoddy."

Napoleon reached in and lifted out a block of something brownish. "Here's the charge. Looks like plastique of some kind." He reached in with his other hand and produced a small complex device. "And here's the detonator. Let's save them. They might come in handy."

"If they'd work when we needed them," said Illya. "The explosive looks all right, but the detonator mechanism seems to have some loose parts."

Napoleon shrugged. "We can always rig up a detonator of our own," he said. "And you never know when you may need a few pounds of high explosive." He tossed it idly from hand to hand while Illya continued to rummage about in the bag, muttering to himself.

Finally, with a soft grunt of surprise, he brought out a set of batteries and held them out for Napoleon to see. They were standard squarish 9-volt cells, but they were yellow, and the inscription on both sides was in Arabic.

Napoleon looked down at them, quite puzzled, and finally took them from his partner's hand. He held them up and examined them closely. Then he looked at Illya. "Egyptian?" he said, doubtfully.

Illya nodded. "Apparently. And that plastique is the type the French were using in Algeria just a few years ago. I would call it fairly likely that this bomb was sent by someone with a base in Egypt. I wouldn't be too surprised if it turned out to be an official operation of Egyptian Intelligence, in fact."

This time Suzie looked puzzled too. "Egyptian? But that couldn't have been their rocket, could it?"

"Not likely," said Illya.

"Especially," added Napoleon, "if this is a sample of their technology. I've seen more care go into the construction of a Molotov cocktail than this shows. I wouldn't trust whoever built this to fire a skyrocket."

Illya glanced sideways at him. "Don't belittle our opponents just because they failed once, Napoleon. There is more than enough high explosive there to damage this corner of the hotel severely, not to mention its inhabitants, and it could have gone off. Remember, contempt breeds carelessness."

"But Egyptian?" Suzie asked again. "How? And why? And for that matter..."

"I'm sure we will find out eventually, Miss Danz," said Illya. "Our assignment, in fact, insists upon it. But first we must find Kurt Schneider."

"And to do that," said Napoleon, "we will have to start by finding Alexei Kropotkin and Archie Gunderson. Suzie, you have all those pictures you took during your adventure in the lifeboat—let's get some enlargements made of the shots you consider to be most recognizable of both of them. And we may as well get one of Kurt while we're about it."

"The slides should be back tomorrow," she said. "I sent them to the Kodak lab in Johannesburg."

"Okay. We can save you some money and have the local U.N.C.L.E. darkroom run up enlargements for us. If would have been safer, by the way, if you'd given us the film to process. An accident in the lab could have been arranged."

"If the situation ever arises again, I'll be sure to remember," she said with a trace of irony in her voice.

"You do that," said Napoleon.

"Not to change the subject," said Illya, "but when we get the pictures, what do we do?"

"Time, as they so often say, is of the essence. You will head for the gay night life and sinful waterfront of Rio de Janeiro and look for your compatriot, Kropotkin. I will brave the teeming streets of Victoria in a search for a Swedish seaman named Gunderson. Suzie will wait here where it is safe, and..."