20 - The Corfu Affair (11 page)

He swiveled to snap his fingers and the display screen lit up to show detail of a rambling old house in Coral Gables, standing in semitropical grounds.

"If it's Solo, we are going to have one hell of a job snatching him out of that rat's nest," a deep voice declared.

"That is not the intention, here. If, as I think, it will be Mr. Solo, our strategy will be to let him enter, make his pick up, and leave again. We will take him later. A point to stress. This operation must be done with great care. For one thing, we must operate completely outside our customary style, in a completely unorthodox manner, because we are dealing with a man who knows all our routines. For that same reason we cannot afford to use anyone who is known to him by sight."

"That won't work!" Kuryakin objected instantly. "Napoleon knows just about every enforcement agent on the staff. All the top rank men, anyway. If we pull out all of them we might as well quit right now. We'll be so crippled, we won't stand a chance!"

Waverly half closed his eyes, stroked his jaw with his pipe stem as he weighed the objection, then shrugged in resignation.

"Very well, we will have to make do with very careful and elaborate disguises. Now for the essential strategy. I'll sketch it, and if anyone can suggest improvements, please interrupt as we go. We have very little time to waste."

Napoleon Solo sat back in the taxi, apparently quite at ease, but in fact very much on the alert. The pick up operation had gone very smoothly, just a trifle too smoothly for his peace of mind. Surely there should have been some sign of opposition? The cab crossed the Tamiami Canal, and once again he could see the airport lights.

"I'm certainly sorry I couldn't stay awhile and visit with you boys," he said. "You seem to have a nice place here. In the daylight, they tell me, the scenery is pretty good too!"

"The way I heard it," one of his escort chuckled, "the scenery is kind of outstanding where you're going, too. They say the Countess is a real dish! What's your word?"

"I'll tell you." Solo grinned. "You take Helen of Troy and the Queen of Sheba. Then you add in those two Italian lulus, Gina Lollobrigida and Sophia. Then Brigitte Bardot, the best parts of Jane Mansfield and Liz Taylor. Stir and save the cream, and you aren't even close!"

"I don't wonder you're in a hurry to get back. How's about asking us all out there for a vacation, sometime?"

"The expenses come high, but I'll give it a mention."

The cab swayed, slowed and halted. The small group climbed cautiously out and looked around.

"This is too easy," one of them muttered, as they formed an apparently casual but efficient surrounding escort for Solo. "I was half hoping some of your U.N.C.L.E. buddies would want to horn in. They must be slipping!"

"Just goes to show!" Solo made a throwaway gesture. "Without me—nothing! I bet they don't even know I'm here."

No one offered to call him on the wager. The little party halted at the edge of the landing field.

"This is it," said the man in charge. "Our job is to see you on the plane, that's all. And there it is!"

"Right!" Solo kept his grin, squeezed down on the sudden tension that gripped him, and made a goodbye gesture. "See you again, sometime."

He set away to walk across the open space. His eyes were constantly moving. He saw nothing suspicious. Neither did his sharp-eyed escort. They were not meant to. But he had instincts, and they were tickling him now. Nor were they false. Ever since landing he had been carrying, unwittingly, three unobtrusive electronic bugs, planted on him by disguised agents. From that moment, attentive monitors had listened in on his every word and, by cross-reference, had been able to pinpoint his location at all times.

Those three "fingers" pointed unerringly at him now as he dawdled across the open, so as to be the last passenger aboard. In this moment the haunting, echoing, nightmare "voice" in his head was mercifully silent. He knew "she" was there, though. He had never been able to forget it, right from the moment the needle had first entered his skull. Silent, painless, yet in some uncanny fashion always there, like a never-ending tension in his head.

He was almost to the gangway now, and no one anywhere in sight. The last straggle of passengers had vanished into the dark doorway up there. He swept one last glance around, wishing his nerves would ease off a little. It was hard to be easy and nonchalant when every instinct he had was screaming a warning. He mounted the tread and ran lightly up the slope, pausing at the top to turn and wave to the watchers he couldn't see but knew were there. It was done. He had made it. He turned to step inside.

A slim, very erect figure moved out of a side door and stood facing him, obstructing the way. A man all in black, even to the jet-black hair and Mephistophelean beard. Only the blazing blue eyes and chill grin remained to give him away. Solo stopped as if he had walked into a concrete post. Ice touched his nerves.

"You!" he gasped, and in that second an infernal buzzing started up in his skull, making him cringe, blurring his vision. "You!" he croaked. "But—I shot you, didn't I? In Paris?"

"So you did, Napoleon." The familiar voice came cold and firm over the hellish racket in his skull. "So you did. And now it's my turn!"

Solo snatched for his weapon, but it was also his turn to be too late. The pistol in Kuryakin's fist spat once, and Solo felt the pang, right in the middle of his forehead. It spat again, but he never felt that one at all. He sagged slowly forward, unseeing and uncaring. Kuryakin caught him gently, settled him over one sturdy shoulder, turned and went, heavy-footed, to where the aircraft's emergency escape hatch stood gaping open ready. It was on the far side of the cabin from the watchers. To the pop-eyed passengers he offered a genial grin.

"It's quite all right, folks. This is only a film sequence for a TV show. Won't keep you more than a minute. Fun, isn't it?"

Beyond the open hatch, down there on the concrete, stood a pickup wagon, all ready. A couple of husky agents stood on its roof. They reached up for the Russian's limp burden, lowered it gently down and inside, then made room for him to jump down himself. Seconds later the wagon rolled away, swiftly and silently, to a far corner of the airfield. There a charter plane stood, propellers clicking over. Ten minutes more, and the plane was airborne over Hialeah and heading north.

CHAPTER NINE

PART of the aircraft cabin had been set aside as an emergency operating room. Solo lay inert on the narrow bed as Susan Harvey checked his pulse and respiration and announced herself satisfied. Waverly and Kuryakin were standing anxiously by.

"It's going to be all right," she said. "You planted the anaesthetic darts just right, Illya. He'll be ready in a moment or two."

"You'll be able to locate the exact spot of the insertion?"

"No trouble to that, Mr. Waverly. Here, you can see for yourself." She lifted the unconscious man's head and showed where a small flap of skin and hair could be lifted up easily. "Plastic plug in place. I doubt if I'd have to use instruments, other than a small pair of forceps. Still, I'll scrub up and do it thoroughly."

"All right." Kuryakin sighed and relaxed a shade. "I'll go and get this comic opera makeup off." He ran fingers through the caked dye on his hair and made a face.

"I rather like it dark," she said. "It suits you!"

He glared at her, but the words which came to his tongue were hardly suitable for saying aloud, so he swallowed them and went limping away to the aircraft's tiny washroom. Waverly lingered, but his thoughts had gone far beyond the operation.

"You anticipate no difficulty in removing this gadget from Mr. Solo's brain, but can you give any estimate as to whether it might have produced any permanent effect?"

"That's something I won't be able to say until we've had a full-scale check-up. Not until we get back to a proper laboratory. The possibilities are immense, and I've nothing at all to go on. Most obvious, of course, is the risk of infection, but I imagine the Countess would be too good a surgeon to make that kind of mistake. There may, also, be localized brain damage. Most probable, I would say, is some kind of mental disturbance, and that is quite outside my field."

"I see. Thank you for being candid, Miss Harvey. I'll leave you now to do what you must. Keep him under sedation until we can lay on a proper checkup."

Waverly went away to his cabin, there to activate a radio link which disturbed a quiet, urbane-looking man who was at that moment leaning back in a seat in the very aircraft Solo had been booked to fly in. At the faint bleat of his communicator he stood up and made his way briskly to the washroom, there to pull out his instrument and answer,

"Crawford White here."

"Everything went as planned, Mr. White. You know what to do now. When you change planes in Rome you will be bothered by the Rome police, you will make a break, escape from them, and then go to ground. It has all been prepared. You will be Mr. Solo until you receive a further order from

"I have all that, Mr. Waverly."

"Good. You may now remove the lead from your module and go ahead as planned. No more communication with us by this channel. Be alert for signals from Corfu, and reply accordingly. Out!"

Whereupon Crawford White carefully deactivated his communicator so that it would not sound again, then, with equal care, set about peeling off a protective layer of lead foil from the module that was securely fastened to his jaw bone by adhesive tape. It was no coincidence that he looked very like Napoleon Solo in appearance, nor that his voice was very similar in tone. He had been selected with those very characteristics in mind. He was about to become Solo in everything but the fact. It was highly important that Countess Louise did not discover that her tame dog had shed his leash. It was all part of a plan that Waverly had concocted, one that required Solo to put his head back into the mouth of the tigress once again, just as soon as it could be established that he was sound in mind and body.

There were minor details to clear up. The stolen modules had been recovered and were even now being inspected by a team of experts under Cronshaw. The jamming interference was off, but could be restored at the least sign of consciousness in Solo. And Crawford White's module was an exact harmonic match for the one in Solo's head. Waverly scanned through a long list of such lesser items, ticking them off. A lot of work had gone into this operation. Harmless copies of the modules were already made and standing by for the next step. Waverly chewed on his pipe and reviewed his plans over and over, striving to find some weakness in them. It was the only thing to do, now, until Solo had been checked out. On him rested the final action.

Chores done, his musings turned to a slightly different theme. There seemed to be a fairly firm and unbroken chain of effect from the theft of the radio-modules, then to Countess Louise, and to this devilish device for controlling a person like a puppet. But how did this concern Thrush? If there was a logical tie up, Waverly couldn't see it. The Countess was definitely involved with Thrush, of that he was certain, although he didn't know just how she functioned within that vast, faceless and sinister organization.

But how on earth could the ability to implant a radio control unit inside a person's skull have any great attraction for the evil men whose one aim was to dominate the civilized world? It was tempting to think they had some wild idea of surgical implantation for large numbers of people, but that just was not feasible. In the first place there weren't all that many modules available. Even the nonprofit resources of military research couldn't make them in very great quantity. And in the second place there was the surgery to think of, and the complex of control equipment. The idea just would not work.

Waverly shoved away from his temporary desk and went impatiently away to find Kuryakin and argue it out with him.

The small, three bed ward was hushed and quiet. Waverly and Kuryakin stood near, but not too near, the bed where Solo lay unconscious. Two male agents chosen for bulk and muscle lounged unobtrusively but alert in the far corners.

Susan Harvey stood by the bed, holding one limp wrist and nodding to herself in satisfaction.

"Almost ready," she said, moving briskly to the trolley where instruments stood ready. She took up a hypodermic. "The sedation is almost gone. This should wake him up right away. I can't tell you exactly what to do in advance, because I don't know what's going to happen. The only advice I can offer is to stay calm, try to reassure him if he seems to need it, and don't use violence unless it is absolutely necessary. Now!" She went back to the bedside, made the injection swiftly, then withdrew a little, to stand and watch like the rest.

The man on the bed stirred, rolled his head, sighed heavily, then opened his eyes. He stared at the roof, then his eyes came sideways, saw Susan, focused on her. He broke into a strained smile.

"I know this bit," he said, in a voice dusty from long disuse. "I'm supposed to say, where am I?"

"Who are you?" she asked, in counter question, and his smile dimmed.

"You have a point. I am Napoleon Solo, late of the United Network Command—" he stopped suddenly, a curious look on his face. He shook his head, but not as a negative, more like a man who expects it to hurt and is wondering why it doesn't. Susan Harvey made a guess.

"You're all right now," she said. "It's gone. I've taken it out." And she made a slight gesture to the top of her own head. Solo stared and the struggle to believe her was apparent in his face. Then relief, a visible sag and audible sigh of relief.

"I don't know who you are, or how you knew, but I owe you much. To have that damned twitch, that infernal sub-audible whisper, gone! It's been a kind of refined hell to know that at all times, no matter what I did, she was listening, right there inside my own head. . You're sure?"

"Oh yes, quite sure. Several hours ago. You are safely back inside U.N.C.L.E. Headquarters now, Mr. Solo. I am Dr. Harvey, of the resident medical staff."