The Monster Wheel Affair - McDaniel David. Страница 8

"I shall do no such thing," said Suzie stubbornly. "The last thing Mac told me was to stay with you and help you. Archie is smart, and suspicious. He knows he's being looked for by people interested in killing him, and he wouldn't talk to you. But he'll remember me, and if I say you're all right, he'll cooperate."

She turned to Illya. "Alexei will probably be easier to approach. In the boat he kept talking about how lonely he was for Russia—all you'll have to do is speak to him and he'll be so happy he'll talk all night."

"But first I have to find him."

Napoleon shrugged. "That shouldn't be difficult. After all, how many Russian sailors can there be in a port the size of Rio de Janeiro?"

"You would be surprised."

"Well, I'll bet there are a lot more Swedish ones in Hong Kong."

"But you'll have me helping you look," said Suzie.

Napoleon stopped and looked her over consideringly. "You know," he said, "that will just about make up for it."

She smiled.

Chapter 4: "You Know A Party Named Kropotkin?"

The waterfront area of Rio de Janeiro is not the sort of place chosen for portrayal in travel folders. For one thing, it smells. A tourist guide could conceivably describe the concatenation of odors encountered there as "exotic," but the tourist would do well to remember that this word is also applied to inedible foods and loathsome jungle diseases. To Illya, whose nose was fairly cosmopolitan, the place simply stank.

A few blocks away, black oily water lapped at corroding pilings and tenders bobbed quietly under night-shrouded piers. Here, a few figures moved in the streets, reeling between islands of noise and light. Illya reeled among them, the better to avoid attention.

But a man alone always gets some attention. A soft voice came from a shattered doorway: "Hey, sailor."

He turned and saw a figure in black. She stepped out, and a street-light half a block away shone off her leather vest and tight pants. She held an unlit cigarette. "Got a match?"

The flames lit her face dramatically. Her hair was long and as black as the rest of her costume; her eyes were bright and sensuous. She let the smoke trickle from between her lips in irregular puffs as she spoke. "My name is Yanara. You are looking for a girl, maybe?"

"Not right now," said Illya. "I've got to find a man first. I owe him some money. He's a Russian sailor, off the Duke of York. If I can find him, maybe I'll have time for you."

"Duke of York? Came in just today. Hey, sailor, I'll wait for you. All men from Duke of York go to A Fonte Sujo. Captain is friend of owner, all crew go for drinking. You find your friend there, I bet. Then you come back?"

Illya nodded, but privately he doubted whether U.N.C.L.E. would authorize this item on his expense account. "Where is it?" he asked her.

A Fonte Sujo was readily identifiable by one of the few real illuminated signs in the area. A pattern of green lights, rather patchily outlining something like a fountain, flashed on and off in front of it, and the sounds of music and celebration made their way past the swinging doors.

Inside, the atmosphere was compounded of smoke, sweat and profanity. Illya stood with his back to the door, squinting through the gray-blue haze, until he saw a sailor not too drunk to walk approaching the bar. He moved forward and arrived alongside him.

"Hello, mate," he said. "You off the Duke of York?"

The other's eyes tracked, centered, and focused. "Yeah—why not?"

"Lemme buy you a drink."

The slack mouth curled up at the corners. "Sure—why not?"

Raw liquor splashed into dirty glasses, and a wordless toast was raised and drunk. Without wasting time, Illya got to business.

"You know a party named Kropotkin? He was on your ship this run."

"Kropotkin? I wouldn't call'm a party—'s more like a street fight. Friend of yours?"

"I owe him some money, and I'd better pay him before I spend it all."

The sailor laughed, choked, and needed another glass of whiskey. "He was around here just a while ago—I saw him in the head. If he ain't shill here...still here...he's prob'bly gone back to the Duke."

"Thanks, mate. I'll look around here."

"Hey, how 'bout another drink with your pal before you go?"

"Sure," said Illya. "Why not?"

The photographs of the Russian sailor firmly in his mind, Illya wondered among the tables, staggering slightly, following an apparently random pattern which nevertheless took him near every man in the place. He wound up at the back, where a small partition separated a few tables from the rest of the floor. Alone at one of them, his back to the wall, his eyes roving suspiciously about him, sat his quarry.

Illya approached him slowly, and waited for the eyes to focus on him. The man was not drunk; he was alert, and obviously on the edge of nervousness. Illya held out a hand to him. "Zdrastvoutye, tovarich Kropotkin."

"Who are you?" came the answer, also in Russian.

"Illya Nickovitch Kuryakin. MacKendricks sent me."

"MacKendricks is dead. Somebody killed him for what he saw. But I saw nothing. Go away."

"Waleed al-Fadly saw nothing also, but he was killed even before MacKendricks."

"What do you want with me? I know nothing. Go away."

"I want to talk to you about Kurt Schneider. The people who killed Mac are after him, and we have to find him before they do."

"Who are you?"

"Have you ever heard of the U.N.C.L.E.?"

"Nyet."

One of the problems of being a secret organization, thought Illya, and said, "Then it would take too long to explain. But we can protect Kurt, and we must get some information from him."

"What kind of information? No, don't tell me. I don't want to know anything. Go away."

Illya shrugged and rose. Either a less direct or a more direct approach to interrogation was called for, and the bar was no place for either. Under the circumstances, he decided to wait and see which opportunity fate offered first.

He faded into the haze, and took a table where he could watch the door.

It was almost an hour later when Alexei Kropotkin stumbled through the crowd towards the exit. Two other men were reeling along with him, a total of six legs seeming scarcely enough to support and balance them all. Illya felt a twinge of frustration. Kropotkin backed up by two shipmates would be even less likely to feel cooperative, even if he was still sober enough to talk straight—which seemed doubtful.

Then Illya wondered carefully. Kropotkin had been rather pointedly alone before, and he didn't look like the type to become suddenly sociable. And he had been nursing a solitary beer. All things considered...

Illya stood up with studied unsteadiness, dropped some coins on the table and wandered towards the door.

Outside, fog was coming up from the harbor, and the air was warm and sticky. Illya hurried into direction the three men had turned, trotting on silent rubber-soled feet. Ahead he could hear the clatter of incautious footsteps on the pavement.

It was late, and the streets were almost deserted. Here and there couples hurried to their various destinations, and occasional solitary figures reeled from doorway to doorway or strode purposefully on unguessable errands. But somewhere ahead, seen dimly through the floating veils of white, two men supporting a third hurried more than drunks would have been expected to. And Illya came behind them, but faster.