The Cross of Gold Affair - Davies Fredric. Страница 21

At the end of the Saturn promenade were more small rooms requiring quick and careful movements. A run across one room and a flat jump across the next brought Illya face to face with a steel door.

“No, Mr. Kuryakin, you are not walking in a circle. This is the other end of the maze.” The door slid open, and he found himself in the small Space Ship Room that Napoleon had so recently exited. ‘Tour friend Mr. Solo didn’t like our company, but I’m certain we can persuade you to spend a little more time with us. There is so much we have to discuss.”

Illya fingered the bottom button of his jacket. Detached, it became a small concussion grenade. Now just open one more door, he thought, stepping toward the spacelock that led to Thrush’s inner sanctum. Aloud, he said, “I’m looking forward to meeting you, but I really can’t stay, especially if Napoleon has already decided to leave. He’s my advance scout, you know. If he turns thumbs down on your accommodations, I’m sure there’s nothing more to be said.”

“The decision is not yours,” said the voice from beyond the door. A swishing sound behind warned him an instant too late. Blackness descended as a Thrush blackjack caught him neatly behind the ear.

Section IK : “By the beautiful sea.”

Chapter 9

“Anybody who swings can’t be all bad.”

Only anger kept Napoleon alive. The wet cold closed over his head and there was nothing underneath but more wet, more cold. In the total body cramp that grabbed him and pulled him under, anger turned into a ball of fire that started in his skull, at the back, and worked into bright, strong fury coursing down his spine.

I just did the impossible, he thought, forcing his hands to uncurl and stretch out. I got here through a hell that would give Dante bad dreams, and I’m not going to be cheated of it by drowning! He forced one, then both legs straight. The cramp pain from the bottoms of his feet shot through his thighs, into his bowels and turned the world black again. No! No! No! he thought angrily. Somehow he made both legs kick, and his head broke surface. Somehow he brought air into his lungs and put back together the pieces of Napoleon Solo.

He floated until he could move both arms and both legs, ignoring the pain. He wanted to cry, and lick his hands, and the blazing touch of salt and cold shot through him down to the navel roots. Flushed, he floated until he realized that the choppy sea was carrying him back into the pilings.

Sanity and some strength returned. Through force of will he held himself still in the near freezing waters, letting the cold numb out his lacerations. Paddling, still on his back, he prayed once more to the patron saint of spies, to keep him

in the dark, and safe from Thrush eyes. More strength returned, and he attempted a single side stroke with some success. ,

Two choices, he thought. Straight in under the pier and trust to luck, or swim down the beach and trust to … Straight in it is, then. The strength for swimming came from some unknown energy source designed for the men who live for danger, and he knew he had to make it in, near the barnacle-covered pilings, because the other path was wide open under starlight.

After all9 he thought, Coney Island is hardly the most exotic place in the world to buy mine. In a job like this 1 could get killed in any of the most glamorous resorts in the world. Nearly have, in point of fact, in most of them. 1 think Td rather get it at Cannes or Trieste.

In his imagination, warm summers on the Mediterranean came back, and the arm-over-arm picked up from a feeble effort to become a rhythm. Memories pushed away the dismal Coney beach, and he was swimming up to another beach far away, an esoteric little strip of sand he knew in Europe, far away from hot-dog crazy crowds, where he had thought he could forget about secrets and death for a while. Adrenalin pumped through him, and a sudden mouthful of briny Atlantic reminded him that even that swim had only been half an eyeblink between fights for his life. He stroked, and began to feel fully in control of himself again, back in harness even with his pants wrapped around one arm.

A small roller wave carried him full-tilt up onto the sand, and all at once the enchantment of his swim was gone. Far from a fight and farther from the Mediterranean summer, he lay on the beach in sodden flannel clothes, mouth crammed with salt and grit, and the cold night air hit him like a shot point blank from a magnum rifle. The water in his clothes and on his body weighed like ten men the size of Avery Porpoise, and the winter freeze settled into his shoes and socks. He always wondered after that evening how that much pain, cold and exhaustion could be overcome; but overcome it he did, slowly heaving to hands and knees, and then to a cautious crouch, hopping further away from the tide.

He stopped spitting out sand when he saw a lean figure silhouetted against the ferris wheel skyline of the amusement centers. Solo went into action, every muscle rejoicing that he was back on dry land and mixing with a human foe instead of the inscrutable Atlantic.

Keeping low, he ran quickly up the beach intending to tackle whoever was standing guard by Thrush s pier, and ask some pointed questions with one knee in the fellows stomach. It had to be quick, bare hands against whatever weapons the sentry had. Despite the drag of his wet shoes he was moving at top speed when he left the ground in a flying tackle. The weight of him and the extra weight of tons of cold water leaped hard, aimed to hit dead amidships.

Not more than a heartbeat separated him from his target when he was blasted out of the sky by a second dark figure, thrown to the ground and pinned.

“Curse you, Red Baron,” he wheezed, trying to breathe around the knee dug firmly into his stomach. “What kind of welcome is this for a poor immigrant just off the ship, anyway?”

Dimly, Napoleon could see that he was held down by two young men dressed entirely in dark denim. But they didn’t wear the little berets that marked Thrush, and objects about them rattled in musical beats when they moved. The one standing asked him, “Just off the boat, why’d you come on like White Fang? All I need this evening is some joker trying to jump for my throat on the beach.”

“Well-” said Napoleon. But the youngster kneeling on him interrupted and pressed harder on his stomach.

“Not well, man, not well at all. Here we are innocently promenading the strand, when we see you doing Lloyd Bridges in the dark. Charlie stops to watch and I lay down. No provocation whatsoever-were just digging. Yet all of a sudden you try to jump Charlie. What kind of a game, that’s all we want to know.”

“And what are you doing out swimming on 3 night like this? You think he’s some kind of health nut, Andy?”

“No,” answered the kneeler, “the health nuts wear union suits or nothing at all. This one is dressed like a very dippy banker or something, complete with shoes.”

“Yeah, shoes. You should hear yourself tippy-toeing up on somebody in soggy shoes. Wow.”

“But-” said Napoleon.

“And breathing,” said Andy, shaking his head mournfully over Napoleon in the dark. “You may just not work out enough, friend, but your wind stinks. You ought to work out more; run some.”

“Sand you got; wind no.” Both of them looked down at him and waited to hear what he had to say.

Napoleon thought wryly of the chase he’d given three Thrushes just a few hours ago, but he couldn’t get breath enough for boasting. The youth holding him down, Andy, couldn’t weigh over 140, but that sat on him like a dozen anvils after the night’s workout. Until that knee raised up, he was likely to remain a fixture on the coast of Kings County.

“You men,” he gasped, “don’t want me to catch my death of cold.” At that, he felt the salt water in this throat was giving more than a touch of diseased hoarseness to his voice. “Why don’t we talk this over? I assure you there was every reason for me to be wary of anyone I saw.”