The Cross of Gold Affair - Davies Fredric. Страница 19

Privacy can go hang at a time like this, he thought. My partner may be up there, and if I can take out an outside guard or two it’ll help the odds of making a successful rescue. With all the extremes of caution a death-laden career teaches U.N.C.L.E. agents, Illya moved in on the fire and strained to catch sight or sound of anyone lurking nearby.

In the darkness, on his belly in cold sand, he wriggled up to a pier support. Keeping his lean frame entirely behind the piling from the fire, he stood up quietly to peer out.

I feel like Oil-Can Harry, he thought, dashing from post to post, slithering around in the dark and plotting eviyal things to liven up the night as soon as I capture-And then he was next to the fire, staring down into it, seeing that it was covered with sand and deserted. Nobody, he concluded. All this skullduggery, all this deep guerilla warfare methodology, and I end up with a dead fire and no one around to tend it.

The camp had just been abandoned, he decided. Embers still glowed warmly in the heart of it. He scattered sand from the remaining wood, using his paper as a shovel, and then looked at what he was doing.

“I suppose I could warm my backside with this little pint-sized picnic fire,” he muttered. “In fact, with the night as rotten freezing unprintable cold as it is, I’m mightily tempted.” He conjured up a picture of himself before a roaring blaze, lacking only his slippers. “The crossword has served its purpose and can be converted to kindling-in fact, I don’t even need to requisition it, because 1 paid for it, not U.N.C.L.E. But all I need is some other night-crawling type to sneak up on me when he sees the fire. I’d probably be so content lolling in front of it that I’d invite him to clobber me.”

Self-discipline had seldom come harder. Nearly shedding a tear, he scooped more dank sand over the wood. “I’m probably doing the Fire Commissioner a big favor, anyway. Maybe they’ll give me a Smokey the Bear type hat ‘for not letting Coney Island bum down.”

He straightened and walked back up to the front of the Space House. Standing just outside the lighted area, he assessed the situation.

With no enemy agents circling the area, he felt sure that Thrush was riding a high wave of overconfidence. Deep inside they had Napoleon, of that he felt certain. Napoleon had just walked into their trap today, seemingly defenseless (because he had intended to be trapped), and they must have thought it a wonderful piece of luck to capture him so easily. Any U.N.C.L.E. agents following ought to have arrived shortly after the car from Gambol’s because certainly Thrush couldn’t know how U.N.C.L.E.‘s tracer device worked.

Their discipline ought to have gone a little slack after a time, thinking they had gotten a free prize.

Illya hitched his trousers up and opened his jacket to ready his pistol. “Napoleon is no prize,” he said under his breath, “and I think I’m going to have to go in there and convince them of it.”

As he stepped out of the shadows and went directly up to the entrance, he didn’t see three figures in denim watching him from the boardwalk. Neither he nor they saw the three Thrushes further back in shadow, who watched everything.

Apprehension dragged Illya’s feet as he approached the Space House that Thrush built. The fire below the pier had to be more than just an abandoned picnic, but what did it mean? Complete silence along the cold wintry beach was itself enough to raise his hackles-at other times of the year the place would be wall to wall with sweating hordes from three states, all fighting for a chance to dip a foot in the salt water and get indigestion from hot dogs and soda. The transition to a loneliness of such proportions, with wind moaning inland from the sea, was nightmarish.

He drew his U.N.C.L.E. Special and picked up speed as he stepped onto the piers asphalt. He seemed to float through the open doors, crouching low. Well into the room he discovered he was surrounded by the figures of armed men, who didn’t move or breathe.

Outside, three Thrushes pounced on the quarry they’d been watching.

Porpoise spun in his swimming pool like the center of a whirlpool. Color blotched his fat cheeks, and sweat poured over his face, making him submerge again and again to keep cool.

“Those fools have got to find Solo!” he repeated between giving orders and making calls to hasten the arrival of a submarine in Lower Bay. “If he escaped my maze, he had to swim away from it. Nobody can do that in this weather and outguess a search party. He’ll be blue and half dead. They’ve got to find him.”

Apis, hunched over the control console normally in care of Arnold, suddenly activated Porpoise’s television-ceiling to show a man’s shoulders and head. The man calling in struggled to keep from laughing at the sight of Porpoise, alarmingly hairless and fat, floating nude in a swimming pool.

“Code Canary,” said the caller. Porpoise scudded to a halt by reversing his sea-screw, and tilted the violet chair back to look upwards.

“Well, Captain,” he said with a thrum of fingers on his armrest, “how soon can you get here? I know all about your regular schedules. I know all about the three-mile limit. I know the waters, the storms offshore, and I know how high I can reach in the Hierarchy if necessary. How soon can you be here? I may require emergency transportation at any moment.”

Amusement touched the televised face. Many years at sea had marked it with furrows and a few scars, and the result didn’t look like a man who quailed at threats.

“The only factor you didn’t mention is the United States Coast Guard,” he said. “They tend to object to my Canary prowling waters with Uncle Sam’s initials on them; you probably won’t get Thrush Central to order me in as close as Sandy Hook, let alone right into your lap. I’m not too excited about unplanned invasions of New York Harbor anyway, and this trip sounds like a dilly. Fleet HQ hinted you may be evacuating your base under attack by U.N.C.L.E.”

“I am not yet ready to leave, and so far the only sign we have had of U.N.C.L.E. is an investigation, in the city, by one of their Enforcement Agents. You are needed, Captain. When we captured the U.N.C.L.E. operative and he escaped, the situation ^turned from safe to yellow alert in my mind. If my men fail to run him down before he gets word to his headquarters, you must be prepared to get me out of here.”

“Be prepared to stick my neck in the noose with yours, is more like it. The quickest approach would get me there early tomorrow, right under the heaviest shipping lanes; what do you think the harbor police will say to an atomic submarine spinning up to your pier?”

“No need, no need,” said Porpoise, shaking his bald head vigorously. “You get close, close enough to catch me if I flit out of here, and I’ll take care of the rest. You can be hovering outside the harbor by sunrise, I know. Wait there, and send me a signal. I’ve got to be covered in case those dolts let him escape. Now, get back to steering, or feeding rocks to your reactor, or whatever you do. I’ve got a hundred affairs to clean up before I can begin to be ready for U.N.C.L.E.”

The Canary’s captain turned into a colorful pattern on the screen. The nervousness that Porpoise had tried to conceal during the call took control again, and he sped over to the pool’s edge near Apis.

“Get my saucer free and ready,” he said, words tumbling over themselves as he manuevered the seachair, wiped away beads of seat, and waved both arms at his tame giant. “And I want my wetsuit, and …” He stopped his gush of words as he looked beyond Apis at the flashing lights on the console. He fell back into the water, and relaxation washed over him.

Apis had anticipated the order in a rare burst of inspiration and had already triggered a series of remote mechanisms into activity from his console. Below the pier, a steel underbelly had cracked outward like the egg of a mammoth bird, revealing the swimming-pool’s true bottom and a saucer-shaped ornament hanging from it.