The Cross of Gold Affair - Davies Fredric. Страница 18

“All well and good,” grumbled Illya, “but you don’t have to work this end of it.” He knew right away he shouldn’t have said that.

“Oh, Mr. Kuryakin, I wish I had the opportunity to get a beach excursion as part of my job. We’re shut up here in a room full of wires and transistors, while you’re out in all that fresh air, away from the grit of midtown air. You Enforcement people just don’t know how lucky you are.”

I could shut her off, he thought. One finger could snap the communicator to off, and leave him out on the beach without even a smart-aleck girl to talk to. He kept trudging along, and decided to give as good as he got.

“Personally, I would love to be trapped in that warm, homey Comm laboratory, surrounded by coffee smells and stagnant old air conditioning air.” He stopped walking and stood on one leg to empty wet sand from his shoe. “You have my personal recommendation to the Enforcement Section, Miss. If you’re eligible for transfer, just trip right on over there. Tell them you want a job patrolling a frozen stretch of waterfront in November without even knowing what to look for.”

Suddenly the boardwalk curved away to give Illya a longer view down the beach, and he stopped. Ahead he saw an amusement pier with all lights blazing. He moved into the shadows under the boardwalk and spoke urgently into the communicator.

“This is where it’s at,” he said. Before he was finished with that much the girl who’d been bantering with him reacted to the change in his voice. His communicator clicked twice, and he was linked through the monitor on Waverly’s desk. “Ahead of me is a so-called fun center, lights on on all sides without a soul around. There’s a car pulled up near it with its rear doors open. Do you think somebody was in that much of a hurry to visit Coney?”

“No, Mr. Kuryakin, I don’t. Generally there is no activity on the beach at this time of year. A brightly illuminated public building at night is highly suspect.”

Illya moved in closer, trying to keep his attention on the fun house and his communicator, while at the same time not walking into the pillars he was using for cover. Waverly spoke again.

“Identify your position, please, Mr. Kuryakin, so that our people in Communications can use local maps to orient themselves. Can you tell us which amusement pier this is?”

“Yes, sir,” he said, crouching behind a dune. “I’m under the boardwalk, so I can’t see which street runs to the beach here, but it seems the building has enough identification on it to satisfy everyone. If you can believe this, it is labeled on the side toward me, ‘The Hilarious, Rollicking, Unparalleled Space House.’ ” He had to repeat that for his chief before he was allowed to continue.

“That name figures in bright red and yellow lettering, in a typeface made famous by the late Phineas T. Barnum. If the smallest punctuation mark in it is less than a foot across, your humble and obedient servant will willingly eat his sweatshirt. The initial letters are a gaudy, ten-foot-high spellout just waiting for someone to link them up with our feathered friends .” He crept forward, keeping well down behind what little cover he could find.

“Please don’t become hasty regarding your sweatshirt, Mr. Kuryakin,” said Waverly. “We may assume Thrush is aware that advertising benefits everyone. Besides, if the temperature and weather reports on that beach may be believed you will have good use for that sweatshirt tonight. Our Meteorology Department tells me that the hurricane Quiggy, although not another disaster like 1965’s Betsy, has turned a cold front toward you, and the temperature where you’re standing is already down to thirty-one. I trust you will not have to endure that sort of weather for long.”

“Yes, sir. I can’t exactly knock on Thrust’s front door and ask shelter from inclement weather, though.” He tried beating himself with one arm to keep warm while holding the communicator, and found it as unsatisfactory as clapping with one hand.

“Well, I’m certainly pleased we turned up something,” said Waverly, “even if it is so impertinently scrawled across the beach for everyone to see.”

The Communications Department Head interrupted just then. “Excuse me, sir, but Mr. Kuryakin has now oriented himself very nearly where Mr. Solo was earlier this evening. All of us who were watching the map then agree that this is where we were looking when the other blip went out.”

“Very good,” said Waverly. “This establishes a definite link between that technicolor Thrush building and our friend Mr. Gambol. Now if we can only use his records to generate some evidence against the investors who worked with him, we just may have a case.”

“Why do we need more of a case than we have?” asked Illya. “This is where Thrush is, we know Gambol came here, and they probably have Napoleon inside. With the puzzles split wide open, haven’t we wrapped the whole thing up?”

Waverly sighed into the communicator. “I’m very much afraid our Finance and Legal sections are recommending we remain silent, based on information we now have. At present we have five thousand investors who can be categorized by the threefold code system Porpoise used to direct his operations, but we have no proof that they really were using this extraordinary procedure. If we have the S.E.G. step in, we’ll stop things but lose everyone. If we take them to court the best we can hope for is years of litigation and counter-suits. What would a judge say if we told him your amusement-park people were spreading stock-market information through a newspaper crossword? How many times has the gold market been cornered that way in the past?”

“We’d be a laughing-stock.” Illya looked glumly at the communicator and at the ridiculous building lighting up the beach in front of him.

“Decidedly,” said Waverly. “Unfortunately, we turned up nothing really conclusive in our search of the brokerage and all the other tenants of that building seem to be pleasantly, honestly secure in unrelated businesses. All we have is our list of suspects, and our own very certain knowledge that they’re bilking the Exchange in connivance with Thrush. It’s up to you to help us get them all behind bars.”

Behind a pillar of the boardwalk Illya stood up and scanned the area. “I think I can get from here down to the pier without much risk of being seen. Perhaps from nearby I can figure some way to get inside that unfunny fun house. To keep from freezing, I may end up by having to walk right in the front door, though.” He signed off with characteristic abruptness and began a close-quarters inspection of the building.

He left the security of deep shadows in a low crouch, moving fast and taking advantage of every roll of the beach to keep out of the light. No one came out of the Space House, and he seemed to have no company along the windy beach but the abandoned automobile. In a few moments he was down at the water’s edge, hiding in the darkness underneath the pier.

As an alternative to the front entrance he marked the cargo door overlooking one side of the pier. Trucks driving up to it would have to use a ramp to deliver, but Illya suspected some heat-paste or a small bomb might work for him. The door was corrugated steel and looked solidly closed, but U.N.C.L.E. agents in the field usually anticipated doors at least that solid.

He ranged full circle about the pier, angling, in front of the fun house swiftly to be in the light as briefly as possible. He saw no signs of a flaw in their defenses. The exercise had helped him keep warm, but the main entrance still seemed the best way to approach the enemy.

Standing on the hard-packed, wet sand at the beach’s edge he realized more energy had gone into the skulking than it was really worth, even if he had gotten warm. His breath was coming fast, and he let out clouds of white every time he exhaled.

Then his eyes caught the flicker of a burning coal beneath the pier. It seemed to be part of a fire in shadow, and he went rigid, wondering if he had stumbled on some Thrush operation below the Space House, or if he was intruding on someone’s privacy.