The Cross of Gold Affair - Davies Fredric. Страница 25

“You are probably trying to wait until Apis tires, so you can use a change of hands to kick away free.” The fat man smiled broadly up at the giant. “I trust you are. willing to wait quite a while. You see, Apis just doesn’t tire.” There followed a rapid succession of immersions, which proved that Apis could move the Russian’s weight around with no more trouble than Illya would have had turning the pages of a book. Illya would have congratulated him on the workmanlike display of strength, had he had the breath. Water and air seemed to run together, and it hardly mattered which he breathed. By the time his seesaw ground to a temporary halt, half the swimming pool was in his lungs and stomach, his eyes were ready to burst with the continued strain of holding his breath when there was no breath, and he’d built up a violent, grinding cough.

“Now if you please,” said his host, “can we get down to business? You U.N.C.L.E. people all seem to take us of Thrush for dunces. I assure you that I am not a dunce, and that if you once more play the fool with me, Apis will continue dunking you until your head turns soft. Have I made myself clear?” The he managed to escape to float before his eyes like a rubber vall, and despite his half drowned condition, Illya wanted to laugh.

“We will table the question of Solos escape for the moment. You might know no more about it than I do, but you did not just follow Mr. Solo in here on speculation, not with this newspaper in your coat pocket.”

The first part of the tirade had gone into Illya’s ears through a great deal of water, and the playful Apis had punctuated his chiefs main points with more dips, so Illya wasn’t quite sure if he had been asked another question or not. He opened his mouth to ask, when his eyes finally cleared and he recognized the newspaper waving back and forth over the floating mound of humanity. Illya closed his mouth with a snap, remembering the fire below the pier, and wishing he had succumbed to the temptation of warming himself over it. The paper, open to the crossword puzzle, was probably going to cost him his life.

“Hey,” he managed at last, “that’s my crossword puzzle. I haven’t finished it yet. Don’t get it all soggy, or I’ll never get ‘The longest word’ in six letters.”

“You simple idiot, you don’t expect me to believe that you have half worked my puzzle, have circled my name, and to put the tin cap on it, have underlined the chief clues all by accident?” Porpoise bobbed before the Russian like a pink cork, getting more and more agitated as he spoke. “Between you and Solo I have learned enough to tell me that U.N.C.L.E. knows a lot and still very little. You can’t hope to stop my operation, even if you should manage to capture me. If you don’t show a bit more sense than you have shown to date, I feel we can dispense with you entirely.”

“I didn’t come here to be insulted,” Illya answered with a straight face. “What’s this about half working your puzzle? -that’s my puzzle, paid for with my dime. I’ll mark it up any way I see fit, if I get enough of it back to mark on.” He was trying to convince Porpoise that, despite all evidence to the contrary, his possession of the puzzle was quite innocent. With a less vain man it would have been a ludicrous attempt, but Porpoise snapped at the bait.

“I am sure you spent your good money for this copy of my puzzle, Mr. Kuryaldn,” Porpoise explained as if to a child. “I am Avery D. Porpoise. I constructed this puzzle for my own purposes, as I am quite sure you know.” Despite his words, his tone and expression belied him. Porpoise wanted to believe that his communications system was too clever to be discovered, and Illya was perfectly willing to let him convince himself that it was so.

“You are Avery D. Porpoise?” Apis, suddenly aware that Illya was drying out, managed to drown out the last few syllables. Porpoise signaled him to let Illya continue, and the Russian came up spluttering, “You write the most fiendishly difficult puzzles in the world. There have been times when I have tom my hair trying to get past one of your strange definitions.”

“Oh, bother the compliments,” said Porpoise, obviously pleased. “You didn’t come here to talk puzzles. Solo’s try to crack one of our brokers in Manhattan and your own follow-up moves are obviously too hostile to me and my project to make me believe that U.N.C.L.E. is unaware of my puzzle.” Porpoise was almost pleading to be reassured.

“What do you mean? What sort of weapon is a crossword puzzle? Outside of causing U.N.C.L.E. to lose maybe a hundred or so man hours daily while we try to solve them, I don’t see that your puzzles can be much of a threat to us at all.” Illya was pulling out all stops, and Porpoise was beginning to doubt the evidence of his own eyes. The Russian completed the ruse by asking in his most innocent tone, “What is the secret of your puzzle? I’m not likely to tell anyone from here, and you’ve certainly got me curious enough to ask.”

Porpoise waved him silent, and Apis took the opportunity to get in some really versatile dunking and dipping. When Illya finally came to a rest once more, the cough he was developing had to compete with a violent set of the hiccups. What little air he managed to drag into his sodden lungs was either sprayed or strangled out of him, and Porpoise was starting off on a whole new subject for discussion.

“You must be aware of U.N.C.L.E.‘s plan to get me out of here. I want you to tell me what sort of plan you

have in mind, when you plan to spring it, and how I can evade capture. If we get all these points settled, I will instruct Apis to give you a rest, a dry rest.”

“The plan is simple,” Illya choked and coughed, interspersing the words with loud hiss. “I was to come in here and tell funny stories, get you laughing, then when you were helpless I was to roll you out-”

Apis outdid himself in a frenzy of dunking. Illya tried to hold his breath, but the cough and the hiccups wouldn’t let up even though he was underwater. Finally the lights behind his eyes went out, and the bucking body went limp.

Illya was unconscious, lying on the pool deck with Apis bent over him injecting a few minutes’ controlled sleep, when Arnold and his two henchmen entered, dragging three angry flower-children.

“Arnold,” said Porpoise with undisguised annoyance, “why are you bringing those three in here again? I thought we agreed to ignore their pranks until they caused us some real trouble, and then to just shoot them out of hand. Why must you continue to annoy me with them?”

“This was no prank,” said little Arnold, holding Malista with both hands and avoiding her frantic kicks at his shins. “It was one thing for them to pose as rotten kids, breaking and stealing. It’s another entirely for them to be U.N.C.L.E. agents, helping Solo and your friend here.” All eyes turned to Illya as he hiccuped violently, but the spasm was over before Apis could move, and sleep took over again.

“I found them out on the beach, trying to flank our search party, talking about how they just helped Solo into a taxi. They probably also helped Kuryakin slip past the searchers, and for all we know they helped Solo escape my maze.”

“You couldn’t build anything Napoleon couldn’t escape!” said Mai, twisting to try and get Arnold with her teeth. He already had reddening tooth-marks on his nose, and drew back quickly enough to show he didn’t want a repeat.

“We didn’t help anybody out of anything,” said Andy belligerently, still trying to break the armlock holding him. “We found this cat out in the water, and dried him off. We got him past your fumble-foots and into a taxi. So what are you gonna do about it?”

The discussion promised to be a lively one, but the small chime in the wall sounded its gentle note, bringing all debate to a close. Porpoise levered himself into an erect sitting position in his chair. “You will all be much quieter. Arnold, hand over your prisoners to Apis, and then be about your tasks. Apis, you will lock our four guests in the Spaceship Room, and make sure that all of the devices are live. Don’t bother them with the usual warnings; if they want to go through the maze I’m sure that none of them will be missed. You two aid Apis.” The flurry of orders finished, the rotund villain set his floating chair into motion.