The Unfair Fare Affair - Leslie Peter. Страница 9

"You got a line on the car he changed into?"

"It was a beat-up delivery van, actually. Yes, we did. They took the autoroute, and we can trace them to a place just beyond Avallon. After that, the trail goes cold—but there is a small private airfield between Saulieu and Changy, in the Morvan. Bel-Air, I think it's called. My guess is that they changed cars at Avallon and then took a plane for Corsica at Bel-Air."

"The guy's definitely in Corsica, is he?"

"Without a doubt," Rambouillet said mournfully. He sniffed and reached out his hand toward a tin of antiflu tablets on the desk. "I wouldn't mind being there myself at this minute," he added. "This perishing winter..."

Solo grinned. "No clues to pick up in the dust cart or the van?"

The superintendent produced a sodden handkerchief from the breast pocket of his jacket and blew his nose violently. "No," he said. "The funny thing is, we couldn't find a single trace of either of them. Nobody has seen them, nobody knows where they are. Which means the whole team can't have gone to Corsica—some of them were evidently left behind to tidy up."

"So it was a highly organized deal, then?"

"Of course it was highly organized. You don't slip through a number one priority cordon by chance!"

"Sure. You believe this inter-European escape deal exists, then?"

"Believe it? I know it, monsieur Solo!" Rambouillet placed two villainous-looking green pills on his tongue and gulped water noisily from a glass by the telephone. "That is not to say, of course, that every person who flees from the law, every smuggler who crosses a frontier without having his passport stamped, is a client of these people. But certain— shall we say important?—escapes have definitely been arranged by them."

"Including Mathieu's?"

"Including Mathieu's. And that of Berthelot, who escaped from Fresnes after killing a warder. And those of Vanezzi and Ponchartrain. And of course that of Paschkov, whom I we had arrested and promised to extradite to Moscow. Very embarrassing, that!"

"Do they have anything in common, all these?" Solo asked. "I mean, can you tell at once whether an escape is an organization plan or simply a one-shot job, privately organized?"

Rambouillet rose to his feet and walked over to join Solo at the window. Beyond the quai des Orfevres, the wash from a barge rolled slowly outward to fragment the dun reflections of the trees along the Left Bank. Traffic, shiny in the rain, swooped toward the Pont Royal above the parapet. The superintendent sighed, and blew his nose again.

"I cannot tell you whether the organization jobs have anything in common or not," he said finally. "Or at least, yes––one thing I can tell you: they have this in common… that we have been able to find out nothing about any of them. Nothing at all! No abandoned vehicles, no discarded clothes, no suspicious purchases in stores. Nothing. I have men infiltrated into every big-time racket in the country, monsieur Solo; I have a list of indics—of informers—that is the envy of my colleagues in Berlin and Rome. But from none of these people can I receive even so much as a whisper concerning the makeup of this network, the names of its members, the way it works, how to get in touch with it, anything."

"But that's incredible," Solo said.

"It is incredible. I agree. In the underworld, as you well know, there is always gossip. Jealousy or envy or greed or revenge inevitably leads somebody to talk. Sometimes. But not here. Every avenue leading to this organization is blocked."

"At least you can admit that it exists and that it baffles you! And that's more than our colleagues beyond the Pyrenees are prepared to do."

"Ah, but you see, you have to take into account the Spanish character," Rambouillet said. "They are a proud people, anxious not to lose face, and it is perhaps understandable that they prefer to ignore officially a problem until they can announce it has been solved."

"All the same, I can't see why—"

"One of their own proverbs sums up their attitude in this case rather neatly," the superintendent interrupted. "in Spanish, it says, 'No creo en brujas—pero que las hay, las hay!'"

"Which, being translated, means

"Freely translated, that means roughly, 'Me, I don't believe in witches... but as far as their existence is concerned—oh, they exist all right!'"

Napoleon Solo spoke to Waverly on the ultrashort-wave transmitter hidden in a false chimney above the apartment of U.N.C.L.E.'s man in Paris.

"It seems," he said reluctantly, "that there definitely is such an organization—and there the story ends."

"I do not follow you, Mr. Solo." Waverly's voice crackled irritably from a speaker concealed in a bookcase. "Please be explicit."

"There appears to be an organization, strictly commercial and apolitical, which arranges for people to pass clandestinely from one country to another. It does not seem to effect the actual escapes—that is to say it won't spring a guy from jail. But once he is sprung, it'll get him away. It's never failed yet, and it leaves no clues."

"Ha! So I was right! Proceed, Mr. Solo."

"That's all there is. End of story. Since nobody's ever been caught and no traces are left, every single angle leading to the organization turns out to be a dead end. I've talked with the big noises in Amsterdam, Vienna, Madrid, Turin and Paris. Most of them admit the existence of the network. None of them has a single line on it. In between times, I've been to Warsaw, Prague and Munich—and I've spent a few days delving about in the underworld myself."

"And?"

"And I have to report that they seem to be right. There's not a whisper to be heard about this group all the way from the Baltic to the Mediterranean. Not a single cheep from a single bird."

"Why not?" Waverly demanded. "Are they scared? Intimidation?"

"I guess not. Personally, I think it's simply because they don't know. It must be a very tight group—and if the regular boys don't know a thing about it, obviously they can't sing."

"But how do criminals wanting an escape arranged get in touch with these people? If nobody knows who they are, I mean."

"That's the whole secret, I imagine," Solo said. "They don't, you see. Because they can't. If they need the service— and if they're lucky—they get contacted." He paused and chuckled. "You know the line," he said. "Don't call us; we'll call you…"

Chapter 5

Open Hostility

SOON AFTER he had finished talking to Waverly, the first attempt on Solo's life was made.

He had left his colleague's apartment in the rue Francois Premier and had just crossed the avenue Georges V when a flock of pigeons wheeling away from the plane trees abruptly changed direction and swooped toward him. Solo was thinking of something else. From the corner of his eye he sensed the approach of something shadowy as the birds momentarily veered in his direction. With some sixth sense reflex he started back a pace and half-ducked.

The instinctive movement saved his life.

Before he had time to succumb to the feeling of foolishness that always sweeps over people in such circumstances, he was hurled to one side by the passage of a small van that had cut off from the traffic roaring up the avenue and, after executing a U-turn on two wheels, had rocketed down the road between the trees and the buildings.