19 - The Power Cube Affair (3 page)

"You have an appointment?"

"Afraid not. I just want to talk to him."

"I'm afraid you can't do that," the delicious voice regretted, "without an appointment"

"I can't, but you can. Tell him it's about his girlfriend."

After a moment or two another voice came on, chesty and thick with suspicion and surprise.

"Barnett here. What d'you want? Who are you?"

"My name is Solo. It doesn't mean a thing to you, but the girl's name should. Initials are M. C. and it reminds me of singing."

There was a distinctly audible gulp and then the voice again, but now in tip-toe apprehension.

"What has she told you? Is she there with you now?"

"She is not, and she didn't tell me a thing that I can repeat on the phone. Personal message. I have to see you, right away."

"Not right away!" Barnett was almost squeaking. "Wait! I can fit you in after lunch. Find your way to Earl's Court and ask anyone for Admiralty House. You can't miss it. I'm Roof Nine. I'll leave word. And Solo—"

"Yes?"

"Don't—do not, whatever you do—bring her with you. No matter what she says. Understand?"

Solo hung up with a sense of disgust and the shattering of a dream or two. So this was the form of the Royal Navy, fabled in song and story? Kuryakin, who had been listening on an extension, met his gaze stonily.

"Jolly Jack Tars and all that," he said. "Nelson would flip!"

"So will Captain Barnett, when I'm done with him. Come on."

The unfortunate captain had been completely accurate about one thing, though. You couldn't miss Admiralty House. Three columns of concrete, each twenty-seven stories high, stood in a triangle to support sweeping convex façades of window glass, and a pedestal on the roof resembled nothing so much as a mighty gun turret without guns. Against the mixed architecture of this borderland between Chelsea and Fulham it stood out like something from a futurist dream. The staff work had been done too. They were expected, shown to the elevator, and efficiently decanted away up on the top level, where the interior decor was pale unstained wood and cherry pink enamel. Solo rapped on a door bearing the figure "9," and as it opened they met the owner of the delicious voice.

For once in a lifetime of wry disappointments Solo had to admit that Miss Thompson matched her voice. In that first slow second of meeting he knew he was looking at near perfection. Her wealth of copper red hair shone as if polished. Crushed violet eyes opened very wide and dazzling teeth were vivid against her perfect complexion as she smiled and said: "Mr. Solo?"

"You're Miss Thompson? This is Illya Kuryakin, a colleague."

"Come this way, please." She swiveled and undulated be fore them, her shape outrageous in white nylon shirt and the briefest possible navy blue skirt. For one female to have so much, marveled Solo, so exquisitely arranged and so blatantly exhibited, didn't seem natural. Miss Thompson halted in the doorway of a far room, turned sideways to inflate her magnificent prominent curves even more, and intoned musically:

"Mr. Solo and Mr. Kuryakin, sir."

Miss Thompson's room had been filing cabinets, a desk and a long window expanse. This room carried on the window along the whole of one wall, but the other three walls were solid with maps. From behind a cluttered desk with four telephones, each a different color, Barnett rose and stood, unfriendly. He was tall, broad shouldered, giving the impression of having been tailored to fit his uniform. And handsome enough to assure him a living as a toothpaste model if ever the navy decided to dispense with his services. As soon as the door was safely shut he barked:

"Very well, what is this all in aid of?"

Solo shrugged, not liking the tone at all. By way of reply he stepped up to the desk, pulled the newspaper out of his pocket and spread it out for Barnett to stare at. There was no need for speech, yet. Barnett looked down, stiffened, and the fresh color drained from his face. He sat, groping for the chair, picked up the newspaper with a shaking hand, and read it carefully.

"My God!" he breathed. "That's—but it can't be! At Hastings? In a delinquent mob? There must be some mistake."

"No mistake," Solo assured him. "That is who you think it is. And she didn't die at Hastings, but somewhere else. She talked, just a little, before the end. Enough to identify."

I'm curious," Kuryakin said, in a deceptively mild tone. "Naval Intelligence, and you can't get as far as the front page of this morning's newspaper without help?"

"She never told you that!" Barnett was suddenly savage.

"She never said anything like that," Solo admitted. "We deduced it. Wrongly, maybe. But she gave us a message to pass on to you."

Barnett had control of himself now, his face gray but calm.

"Very well. Deliver it. No, just a moment!" He rose suddenly, almost ran to the door to open it and call, "Louise, dear, lay on some coffee, would you? Better get it yourself, you know how slack they are in the canteen." He came back, walking heavily. "All ears and tongue, that girl. Now, that message, if you please. And you do understand, I hope, that I can't do any explaining. At all. I could be up to the neck in trouble as it is just by having you two here."

"I was hoping for explanations. In fact I intend to have them. I want to know what kind of brainless setup let her in for what she got—before I deliver any message, to you or anyone else. You say you're not in Intelligence?"

"I am not. This is my job, right here." Barnett flung out an arm to embrace the walls full of maps. "Home and Mediterranean Fleet disposal. Nothing else. My relationship with—her—is—was—something utterly private. Nothing to do with this. Or you."

"You're not the big man," Kuryakin said, with sudden insight. Barnett stared at him. The Russian agent went on deliberately. "You're just a cog, or a link in some chain. If we gave you this message, you'd pass it along to somebody else."

Solo listened approvingly. Barnett's face gave away the accuracy of Illya's guessing. "We want to meet the man who tells you what to do, the man to whom you'd pass this message. Or we don't deliver."

"That's telling him, Illya. Look, mister, a very good friend of ours is on his back in the hospital right now because he stepped in to help—her. We are making this our business, and we deal with the head man, or nothing."

Barnett sagged, reached for his chair again and slumped into it. His handsome face was wet with perspiration. "You don't know what you're asking. I can't make that kind of decision!"

"You don't have to. Just talk to him. Tell him what we've said."

Barnett shook his head, not as a negative but like a man recovering from a solid punch. "I don't know. This is so— damnable! Mary! I can't take it in yet." The outer door clicked open and the gorgeous Miss Thompson came in pushing a tea cart. Barnett rose urgently, came around his desk at a trot and swerved to pass Miss Thompson.

"Look after them, dear," he muttered. "Give them anything they want. I won't be long!"

"Well!" She stared wide eyed, then busied herself with the ceremony of pouring, a process involving a degree of stooping and wriggling that Solo couldn't bear to watch. "Milk and sugar for both of you?"

"Please!" Solo said, then before he could help himself he added, "The view is certainly something, up here!"

"Yes, isn't it?" she cooed. "It's a pity, really, that not many people get this far, to see it properly." She finished pouring, took a cup herself, and hitched herself recklessly onto the edge of the desk, perching one foot on Barnett's chair. "I wonder why Roger ran off like that."

"Went to phone someone," Solo answered, then looked at the colored array on the desk and frowned. To cover the gaffe he ventured, "Just you and Captain Barnett up here alone all day?"

"It's dreadfully dull," she confessed. "After all, you can get fed up with just looking, can't you?"

Solo smiled uneasily, eased the collar from his neck and turned away to look out of the window. The click of the door saved him from trying to go on with the impossible conversation. Miss Thompson slid leggily down from the desk and departed. Barnett shut the door firmly after her, his face set.

"You're in," he said forcefully, "and don't blame me if you find yourself something a lot bigger and nastier than you imagine. You have a last chance to deliver that message to me and forget all about it—"

"Nothing doing!"

"All right. On your own heads. By eight o'clock tonight you're to find your own way to a place called Ferrier's. It's a club, of a sort, not hard to find. There'll be a table for you. The headwaiter's name is Mario Scarabella. You'll be met."

"Cloak and dagger stuff," Kuryakin snorted, from his stance by the big window. "Should we give some password or other?"

"You'll be met," Barnett repeated between his teeth. "And you'll be judged. On trial. All right?"

"Fair enough," Solo admitted. "We'll be there."

Miss Thompson gave them a beaming smile as they left.

Outside, they managed to hail a taxi and told him where to go.

"And what do you make of all that, Illya?" Solo murmured.

"Chiefly, that we have been fed a lot of myths, what with the Royal Navy being all stern and seaworthy, and the British being a law abiding people, according to you."

"You can do your funny act later. Right now it looks as if somebody doesn't want us in on whatever is going on."

"That much, at any rate, is familiar. What is puzzling me just a bit is what I saw in Miss Thompson's office."

"What?" Solo was mildly curious. He hadn't been able to notice anything beyond the gorgeous Miss Thompson herself.

"On her window ledge. The biggest pair of binoculars I ever saw!"

"Hah!" Solo snorted in disgust. "According to Barnett she's all ears and tongue. According to you she has big binoculars. What's wrong with everybody all of a sudden?" The taxi purred on in silence for a while, then Solo gave tongue again. "Hold it, driver, we'll get off here!"

"What now?" Kuryakin queried as the cab slid away.

"We can walk to the hotel, it's not far. I want a paper, see if there's anything more about the girl, if they've identified her yet."

They hadn't, and the midday account was patently a blowup of the few details in the first edition. The two men strolled the rest of the way, and thus came to the side road leading to their destination in time to see a remarkable incident. Just ahead of them a taxi pulled in to the curb to discharge two men, and whirled away again. The two turned to go down the same lane that Solo and Kuryakin were heading for.

Out of the casual mill of midday pedestrians, from archways and doorways, from behind corners and lamp posts, a dozen leather-jacketed long-haired youths seemed to materialize, to group, to close in on the unsuspecting two. And then, so fast and unexpected that it caught the two observers completely by surprise, the group exploded into a savage melee of fists and kicks, bashings and stampings, and then, as rapidly as it had gathered, the mob dispersed, and all that remained were two crushed and unconscious bodies on the pavement.

The whole thing had taken no more than fifteen seconds. Fifteen seconds more and there was mild uproar, a pressing crowd, policemen, and the urgent clang of an ambulance.

Solo stirred, shook himself, and looked at his companion.

"You notice anything odd about those two, Illya?"

"I did. To the casual glance, the uninformed eye, they might have been mistaken for us."

"Coincidence, you think?"

"Or a pair of big binoculars and some fast work on the telephone. The law abiding British?'

"She's such a pretty girl, too. I'm looking forward to Ferrier's!"

THREE

FERRIER'S WAS a little harder to find than they expected. The outside neon was faint, the doorway discreetly hidden away in a side alley, the unremarkable door yielding to a stairway that went down into red half light and mirrors. A massive doorman asked their names, then let them through a swinging mirror into muted bedlam compounded of shrill voices, jarring music and swirling rainbow lights. The head waiter, a thick necked Italian, would have fitted better into a decorous hotel background.

"The food is good," he told them, as he showed them to a table for four on the edge of the miniature dance floor. "For the rest—!" he gave a despairing shrug. Solo smiled;

"We'll take your advice," he said. "What do you recommend?"

With that pleasant chore attended to Kuryakin leaned back. "This place could hold any number of surprises. The pseudo-psychedelic lighting is as good as camouflage."

"Can't tell friend from foe. Not that we have any friends here. I still don't see why it had to be Miss Thompson, Illya. Why would anybody want to get rough with us?"

"Never mind why. Somebody did. Thing is, which side?"

"Come to that, which side are we on? Certainly not the Green and Co. crowd, but from what I've seen of the others I'd hate to run with them either, if Barnett is a fair sample."

"That's exactly what we're here to find out, Napoleon. Meanwhile, this is excellent chicken soup. We might as well enjoy it before the little man with the dark glasses and the beard comes to spoil it."

Solo chuckled. "Somehow," he said, "I don't think it's going to be a bit like that. My guess would be one of those pinstripe-pants city types with a rolled umbrella and a Bertie Wooster accent."

Although both men appeared casual, and relaxed enough to pay admiring attention to the colorful scene around them, they were razor alert for the least sign of odd activity. So it was that they both tensed as a minor drama began to unfold before them. The eye twisting light effects had been momentarily abandoned in favor of daylight tinted fluorescence from the high ceiling, and in this clear glow there came a tall and haughty blonde, creamy locks piled high on her head to give her added inches, a silver cape draping her to elbows and the rest only half obscured in openwork silver mesh to midthigh. The rest was long and shapely legs sculptured in glitter sheerness. She strode boldly across the tiny dance floor with the headwaiter trotting after her in passionate attempt to reason and argue.