The Finger in the Sky Affair - Leslie Peter. Страница 25

Above the tumble of pantiled Proven?al roofs surmounting the narrow houses on the far side of the street, a second row of buildings rose higher into the sky. It was in the upper story of one of these, looking across the lower roofs to the coast, that Helga Grossbreitner's apartment was situated, Illya had discovered in the Mairie at Nice.

"There's no street between the two rows," he told Solo in a low voice. "The houses are all jumbled together and the entrance will be on the far side of the second row."

"Okay," Solo answered. "We'll take it from two directions as we planned. You find your way to the entrance and get in on the ground floor; I'll go in from the top and see you later. We've got—let's see—twenty-seven minutes before the Trident is due. Keep in touch..."

With a wave of his hand, Illya melted into the shadows and vanished through a narrow Gothic archway between two houses. Solo catfooted across the cobblestones, ran lightly up a stone staircase leading to a vine-covered balcony and swung effortlessly over the iron railings to grasp a stackpipe. He shinned up this to the guttering, hauled himself onto the roof, and advanced cautiously up the sloping tiles until he reached the wall of the row of houses behind.

Helga Grossbreitner's apartment was in a building twenty yards to his left. Now that he was closer, he could see through the picture window spanning the entire frontage a dim glow of red light. Faintly, from somewhere below, he felt the hum of a generator.

Another stackpipe took him to the second row of roofs. As soon as he reached the ridgepole, he stood upright and surveyed the scene. Around him a forest of chimney stacks, each covered by its little shelter of curved tiles, dotted the roofs of St. Paul. Slopes of every conceivable pitch and angle, gashed here and there by the narrow canyons of streets, stretched away and up towards the square-towered church topping the hill in the middle of the village. Beyond this jagged skylight pulsed the fitful glare of Roman candles, catherine wheels and set-pieces raining colored fire. Behind, the headlights of distant cars probed the dark countryside falling towards the coast.

Two more roofs lay between him and his goal. With infinite care, he trod softly across the steep tiles, clambered down to the first roof, which was on a lower level, crossed it, pulled himself up onto the second, edged around a chimney stack, and dropped on all fours as he approached the final slope. From what he could see, the antennas sprouting from Helga's roof were a good deal more sophisticated than would be required for the reception of France's television signals. Almost certainly, among the bizarre shapes of the ordinary domestic TV aerials which rose from the chimneys around him, was the evidence of a powerful transmitter and receiver on an international scale.

He eased himself over the parapet separating the two houses and paused. Helga's roof was of a shallow pitch—but to counteract this advantage, a broad modern chimney stack carrying six pots straddled half the width...and the remaining distance was obstructed by a sloping buttress leading down from the top to the gutter. Beyond the angle of stone, he could see the corner of a skylight set in the tiles. A faint light hazed the air above the glass.

Solo looked at the luminous dial of his wristwatch. Somewhere down below, Illya should be preparing to crash the entrance to the house.

He waited a minute and a half and then moved carefully to the edge of the roof. Now that he was nearer, he could see through the skylight into the attic below: part of a workbench, the edge of a chair, one side of a gray steel console studded with switches and dials.

Averting his eyes from the dizzy drop to the street, he leaned his back against the slanting buttress and swung first one leg and then the other over to the far side. Then, automatically dusting off his jacket with one hand, he moved thankfully back towards the center of the roof. The skylight was only ten feet away.

Something hard jammed into the small of his back. "Okay, bud," a voice rasped into his ear. "Raise those hands...quick. One move and you're dead..."

Chapter 14 — Indoor fireworks

A rocket burst with a thunderous detonation and released a fleur-de-lys of colored streamers as Illya Kuryakin located the door of the house. It was a massive affair, peppered with iron studs and recessed deeply into a stone arch. Curiously, there were no windows on the ground floor of the building—nor could he see the row of name tags and bells which customarily flank the entrances to apartment houses.

He had been going to ring the bell of the ground-floor apartment if there had been one, with the intention of bluffing his way in on the pretext of having pressed the wrong button—and then improvising once he had got up the stairs. Now, however, he reconsidered: it looked as though any other apartments in the building might be a blind. Probably the whole place belonged to THRUSH. He examined the archway and the small porch behind it. Concealed among the ornamentations of the stonework was a diminutive circle of ground glass. A matching circle glinted dully on the opposite side of the opening. Presumably, once anyone crossed the threshold and broke the 'magic eye' beam which spanned the space between them, a photo-electric cell would actuate some kind of warning...perhaps a closed-circuit television camera—yes: the porch was roofed with tiles of bottle glass. One of them would be a hidden lens.

Kuryakin looked up and down the narrow street. On both sides, the ancient houses lay dark and silent. He had not seen a soul since he entered the village. The roadway was only six feet wide. The house opposite the THRUSH headquarters seemed to be some kind of gallery: there were paintings displayed in a window. From beneath a balcony on the first floor projected a stout wooden beam supporting a rustic sign—and a few feet from the end of the beam was the wall of the house he was trying to enter. If he could tightwalk to the end of the beam without falling, there was a wide window ledge opposite, a little higher up...

He crouched, flexed his muscles and sprang upwards. His outstretched fingertips brushed the wrought-iron curlicues supporting the beam, but he was unable to grab hold of them. He tried a second time—and again his hands hit the iron without being high enough to curve around it.

Breathing hard, Illya waited until fireworks over the roofs brightened the sky and then, gathering himself, leaped once more. This time his fingers curled over a loop of the ironwork and held. There was a wrench tearing at his hands and shoulders as his full weight dropped earthwards—but he hung on. Swinging back and forth with gathering momentum, he finally managed to hook one foot into another curlicue and from there levered himself painfully to the balcony.

After a pause to regain his breath, he stepped out onto the wooden beam. It was about two inches wide—and fortunately it was flat rather than rounded. Providing he could keep his balance...

Bringing one foot up behind the other—for he dared not risk overbalancing by crossing them—he inched out from the balcony towards the other side of the street.

In the occasional flicker of reflected light, the cobblestones gleamed fifteen feet below. When he was about halfway along, the beam creaked and shifted slightly. He swayed, sawing with outstretched arms on either side to preserve his balance. Another two feet only...but would the beam hold? For the further away from the balcony he got, the greater the leverage on the fixing points.

Eighteen inches to go—and again the beam creaked, more loudly this time. The sign hanging below it swung once to and fro, faintly squealing its iron hooks and eyes.