The Finger in the Sky Affair - Leslie Peter. Страница 24

The pilot lifted his hands from the controls and spread his arms in a Gallic gesture. "For people to see, monsieur," he said. "To enjoy. Part of the season. They come from all over the south to watch—see, the roads for two kilometers around the village are choked with parked automobiles...There will be tens of thousands of people sitting on the terrace walls of the vineyards. The spectacle is free, after all. It is very good for the tourism."

"But how can such a small village afford this huge display?"

"St. Paul is not large, but the municipality is very rich. Many wealthy people live there. And what else can they do with all the tax they gather? The place is enclosed. There is electricity, water, drainage. There is no room for expensive improvements, wider roads and that sort of thing. So why not spend money on enjoyment?"

"A very civilized attitude," Solo said. "I wish we had known of this before. Still—it should make our task easier. All the lighting is switched off during the display?"

"Everything. Even the street lighting on the roads leading to St. Paul. For the finale, they reenact the sacking of the town by the Saracens, with smoke screens and red flares to simulate the burning. Then the lights come on and there is a fair outside the gates, in the place where the old men play petanque under the plane trees. It is very gay."

The Sikorsky was sinking slowly into the deep valley beyond the spur. It skimmed the top of a geometrically planted orange grove and settled gently down in a field. Beyond the dark bulk of the ramparts, the sky shimmered with silver rain.

The pilot handed them climbing ropes, crampons, a pick. "Good luck, messieurs," he said. "If one may venture a question...?"

"By all means."

"You have to negotiate an extremely steep, rough hillside, scale a seventy meter cliff and then climb the stone ramparts to get in. At the other end of the village is an open gate with a road leading through. Why do you not use that?"

Solo laughed. "There are many THRUSH agents here who we do not know by sight—but who may know us," he said. "Even in a crowd, we might be recognized. And the success of this operation depends on surprise. So we enter by the least expected route..."

The pilot waved goodbye and slid shut the perspex canopy. Soon, the clatter of the helicopter's rotors was dying away in the sky towards Nice.

Illya and Solo walked across the field, threaded their way through the rows of a small vineyard and began the stiff climb to the rockface. The going was rough, the ground uneven and tussocky—and the sporadic bursts of different colored light erupting in the sky were more of a hindrance to their progress than a help. By the time they reached the foot of the cliff, they were out of breath and drenched in perspiration.

From directly below, the bluff and the ramparts surmounting it looked enormous: a giant's castle bulked against a fairy-story sky. Solo unhitched the rope from his shoulder and knotted one end around his waist. "We could do with a handful of those magic beans right now," he observed with a wry grin. "However—let's get on with it..."

Apart from the mutter and snap of fireworks from the other side of town, the night was quiet—and the mistral which had been blowing when they left for Grenoble had died down as suddenly as it had started. The cliff was not quite perpendicular but it was a difficult enough climb in the fitful light. The first fifty feet were the easiest, the rock being seamed and fissured with pockets of soil and vegetation to afford them footholds. After that the face became steeper, the weathered slabs larger and smoother. Having forced their way up a narrow chimney with shoulders and feet, they came to a halt on a ledge.

"It's no good, Napoleon," Illya gasped. "We'll have to use the crampons from now on."

Tapping the steel spikes into the rock seemed to them to raise echoes loud enough to waken the dead. But no heads appeared silhouetted against the ramparts far above; no searchlight beam split the night to discover them spread like flies against the wall. Laboriously, painfully, with screaming muscles, they forged upwards. Once the rock crumbled when Solo put his weight on a crampon, and the spike fell out and down, to tinkle from boulder to boulder in the darkness beneath. Solo grabbed wildly at the cliff face, his fingers tearing on the eroded stone. For a moment he arrested his fall, then the rock crumbled again and with a strangled cry of warning to Kuryakin, who was in the lead, he plunged downwards to the full length of the rope. Fortunately the Russian had one arm around a crag, preparing to knock in another crampon. As Solo called, he flung the other arm around the projecting rock and tensed himself for the shock as the agent's full weight jerked appallingly on the rope circling his waist.

Gritting his teeth, the Russian hung on, his lips drawn back with effort and his forehead beaded with sweat. For a giddy moment, Solo swung like a pendulum in space. Then his threshing feet found interstices in the rock face and he was able to slowly fight his way back to his former position. A few minutes later, they reached the top of the cliff. Across a stretch of grass, only the stone rampart, leaning away from them into the night, separated them from St. Paul.

"Thanks, Illya," Solo panted. "I'd have been a goner if you hadn't held on."

"I cannot say it was a pleasure," Kuryakin replied. "But I certainly wasn't prepared to complete this mission alone!...Let's move along this way a bit before we climb the wall: the crevices look wider over there."

Facing the rough-hewn blocks side by side, they edged along the foot of the rampart. Suddenly the Russian froze, his hand outstretched in astonishment.

"What's up?" Solo whispered. "Why did you stop?"

Wordlessly, Kuryakin gestured to his right. Solo looked over his shoulder and gave a low whistle of amazement.

On a level with their heads, a pair of naked feet dangled against the wall. The ankles were bound together with wire. Above the legs was a body. And from behind the lolling head, a rope stretched tautly up into the dark to disappear over the parapet on top of the rampart.

Illya produced a small flashlight from his breast pocket and switched it on. In the pencil beam they saw the body was that of a man in pajamas, the striped material splotched brown with old bloodstains. The dead face was lacerated and swollen, with bulging eyes and protruding tongue. Cuts and bruises scarred the bare chest. The man's hands had been tied behind his back.

"It must be the survivor they abducted from the hospital," Solo whispered. "Poor devil. They must have tortured him to find out what he knew—and then tied him up, put the rope around his neck and thrown him over to strangle slowly in the dark..."

Illya shuddered. "It is horrible," he said. "This nest of evil must be smoked out, Napoleon. We can do nothing for the poor man now. Let's go."

The final climb up the sloping wall of the rampart was not too difficult and soon they were peering cautiously over the parapet. A raised concrete promenade ran about four feet below the lip. Below this was a narrow roadway, on the far side of which clustered the tall, shuttered houses of the village. Not a soul was to be seen, not a light showed: obviously the inhabitants were outside the walls on the far side of the town, watching the display.

Quietly they dropped to the ground, unfastening the rope and stowing it together with the remainder of the climbing equipment behind a bollard. A line already fastened to this rose to the parapet and disappeared over the top: here undoubtedly was the other end of the rope from which hung the murdered survivor...