20 - The Corfu Affair (12 page)

"I'm glad to meet you. I wish it could have been under happier circumstances, or sooner. Right now I have to report to Mr. Waverly. It's urgent!

"Look around," she invited, and moved back a step. Solo hoisted up on an elbow and moved his head.

"Mr. Waverly!" He inclined his head a fraction, then grinned as he saw Kuryakin. "You too, Illya. I'm glad to see you can stand being shot. I've been trying to forget that bit of nightmare for some time. Was I dreaming, or did you shoot me, just a while ago?"

"No dream. But those were anaesthetic darts, for a purpose. Yours were real bullets, Napoleon!"

"I know." Solo compressed his jaw sadly. "I didn't have much choice. I tell you, you've no idea just what brain washing is until you've had a she-devil actually sitting inside your skull repeating her commands. It's enough to drive a man mad."

"Did it succeed, Mr. Solo?" Waverly's voice was quiet but firm.

"I don't think so, sir, but I'm ready to take any tests you like. In the meanwhile, there's something you need to know." He sat up in the bed now, threw back the sheet and swung his legs to the floor. The beefy agents moved closer, just in case, but he never even noticed them. "Louise is setting up one of the most deadly rackets you can imagine. You know, I take it, how the modules work?"

"Not exactly." Waverly was curious but very much on his guard.

"It's really very simple. Louise explained it all to me when I was in no position to argue. You see, she kept one half of the module pair to act as command. That's fitted into a power-transmitter with a microphone. There are various settings. On one certain setting she can talk into my head and I can't hear at all, not consciously. It's pitched subliminal. It's deadly!"

"Not any more," Susan reminded him, and he gave a quick laugh.

"It's going to take me a while to adjust to that again. Now—to get at the real devilment. With those modules Louise was experimenting with the remote control of various creatures, so I gather, but her big aim was to enslave people. She grows people." He said it flatly, waiting for the reaction. It took a while to come, and him some time to explain.

"You mean—" Susan's voice shook as she tried to appear scientific, "that woman can actually grow complete human copies? Androids?"

"That's exactly it. And perfect, they are. Beautiful. But brainless. No, not brainless, that's not the word. Mindless. Just waiting to be trained. As she puts it, an empty book, waiting to be written in."

"That doesn't entirely surprise me," Kuryakin put in, quietly. "I saw those laboratories, in Paris. You will recall, Mr. Waverly, I reported that there were embryologists on the staff. You can see why, now."

"Good Heavens!" Waverly caught his breath. Solo grinned.

"Seems like a dream now, Illya, but that was some scrap we had. But I did shoot you, surely? I remember that bit."

"You missed." Kuryakin moved forward, shoved his fringe aside to show the almost healed scar. "I've told you a hundred times, Napoleon, that you tend to pull off to the right with that Luger of yours in a snap shot."

"Yeah!" Solo shook his head ruefully. "I'll have to watch that."

"This is no time for badinage—" Waverly began, testily, but the Russian halted him with a gesture.

"Just a minute, sir. Napoleon, did you drop that pencil-camera by accident? Really?"

"No. I planted it. And the diagram, as best I could. It wasn't too easy to get those pictures, let me tell you, but that fiendish woman has to sleep sometime."

"You did very well, Mr. Solo. Please go on with your account. You spoke of a master plan?"

"That's right, sir. On the surface, it sounds nothing. Louise is selling slaves, of her own make. She guarantees to deliver the perfect slave, servant, assistant, companion, call them what you like. At a price. A quarter of a million dollars each, cash on the nail. Each one fitted with a skull unit, the matching half of which is supplied to the new owner."

"That is certainly gruesome." Waverly shivered. "But not a very great threat to us. Is it?"

"Not, as I said, on the surface. But there's more. So far she has made her sales pitch to the various regional heads of Thrush. And she has managed to con them into a further refinement. She operates on them, just as she did on me, and inserts a command module to match the slave module. The con is that the big Thrush now has a perfect slave, utterly obedient and absolutely reliable, that will respond to the master's every wish, be in total contact at all times, and through which the master can literally 'be' wherever the slave is. The ideal snoop."

"Just a minute!" Kuryakin became agitated, and Solo grinned.

"You've spotted it, Illya. You would, I guess. It's like this, sir. What Louise is
not
telling them, but I happen to know, is that she has her own split-frequency radio setup. She can, at will, transmit into or listen from any one of those modules, at
any time
. Not only does she plan to be on the inside of everything that happens within Thrush, she plans, in the long run, to take over. Thrush aims to take over the world. Louise intends to take over Thrush, from the inside!"

"Can she do that?" Waverly demanded.

"I'll say. When the little demon inside your head starts to shout, you obey. Believe me, you obey, or you get a jolt that feels as if the top of your head is coming off. She can do it!"

CHAPTER TEN

OUT of a long and tense silence, Waverly spoke with a sigh. "At any rate we have established one thing to my satisfaction, Mr. Solo. Your mind is unimpaired. That is something to be thankful for. But your news is very bad indeed. I need hardly point out to any of you that the one thing which has always been on our side is the human tendency among the Thrush Hierarchy to quarrel among themselves for supremacy. It is their one weakness. And they know it as well as we do. That is why they have labored so long to perfect their Ultimate Computer. Of course, it goes against the human ego to take orders from a Computer, which is still a point in our favor. But if this dreadful woman gets her way, we lose all that. The entire Thrush evil will come under the single-minded and brilliant control of one person. That we must stop, at all costs."

"That means stopping Louise," Solo declared. "There's no other way. And I don't see how. Not now. If I was still on the inside, I could get close enough—but that's out, now. You can safely bet that she knows, by now, that I'm off the chain. Free of her influence."

"That is not necessarily so, Mr. Solo." Waverly dropped the words into the discussion very gently. Solo stared.

"But she must know. Just as soon as you took that thing out of my head, it would go dead, and she would know!"

"At this moment," Waverly said, as if talking to him self, "Mr. Crawford White is on the plane you were supposed to catch. When he touches down at Rome there will be a carefully contrived conflict with the Rome police. He will run, will go into hiding, and stay under cover until the heat is off."

"So?"

"So Mr. White bears a strong physical resemblance to you, Mr. Solo. In particular his voice is very like yours. At times, for the amusement of fellow agents, he has been known to do lifelike impersonations of you. And he has a module taped to his jaw that is a perfect wavelength match for the one we removed from you."

Solo thought hard, and it was obvious that he didn't like what he was thinking. Waverly waited a moment then resumed:

"He will remain in hiding long enough to give us time to work out some feasible plan for removing that menace from Corfu. We have two or three days, possibly more. But, and I am sure you have already realized this, Mr. Solo, the success of any plan we may devise will depend to a great deal on you. In the circumstances I feel I cannot order you to cooperate. I cannot order you to put yourself in jeopardy again, where that woman is concerned. But I can, and I do, ask you to consider our plan."

Solo's face was a study in tension, but before he could bring himself to pass comment, Susan Harvey stepped into the discussion.

"Mr. Solo is still my patient," she stated firmly. "I forbid any further discussion or planning for at least twenty-four hours."

"That's it!" Solo caught her up quickly and grinned. "Doctor's orders. You can't argue with those." He looked up at her, then up and down, and his grin bloomed into a warm smile. "Especially a doctor like this. All at once I feel weak and helpless. Leave me!"

Kuryakin snorted. "You need a doctor like you need a hole in the head!" He aimed a cold blue stare at Susan. "Don't let that helpless-in-bed routine fool you. What you should have done, while you had the chance, was to have inserted an on-and-off switch into his skull. You may need it." He moved to the door on the heels of Waverly and the two grinning agents. In the doorway he halted and turned.

"Don't worry, Napoleon," he said. "I won't tell anybody."

Solo bit it. "Won't tell anybody what?"

"That you really do have a hole in your head, as they have always suspected!"

He ducked out of the door as Solo reached for something to throw, and then chuckled easily. But the smile faded as he turned to look at Susan.

"It's a point," he murmured. "Will I be affected, d'you think?"

"Not at all," she assured him. "In a week or two there'll be hardly a trace. With all her faults,
Docteur-Proffesseur
Louise Santelle is still a fine surgeon. She made a neat job."

"Who?"

"Your Countess Louise. I looked her up in the medical records. She was a brilliant woman in her field. Too bad she had to go crooked."

"Ah well," he sighed, and wriggled happily in the bed. "Let's not talk about her. Let's talk about you. How come, for instance, that someone as beautiful as you has been right here in Headquarters for a time and I didn't know?"

"I can't imagine," she retorted calmly, "since my special field is dealing with the worst cases of infection and contamination."

"Like that, are we?" he murmured. "Tell me, what will your tiny-tot sister say when she finds out you've pinched her best dress?"

"I think," she said, "it's high time I gave you another shot of sedation. You're beginning to get worked up…"

The trim blue-and-silver yacht heaved lazily at her anchor in the jewel-blue swell of the Ionian Sea, just half a mile south of the Kanoni Lagoon, and slightly less than that away from the eastern shoreline of the island. On the upper deck, in the glorious afternoon sunshine, Illya Kuryakin lolled in blue bathing briefs and acted the part of a careless holiday-maker. By his side sprawled Susan Harvey, taking the sun in a minimum white bikini. The pair of them had gone deliberately through the charade of showing excitement and interest in the scenery, had stared adequately but not too pointedly at the pink-and-white fairy tale palace in the near distance. Now they were just lazing, showing no great interest in anything.

Solo had warned them about Louise and her habits with her telescope, so they knew they had to go through with the act thoroughly. Their detailed and critical study of that candy floss edifice on the shore had been done from the safe obscurity of below decks. Down there, too, were four men, agents handpicked for muscle and determination. They were keeping completely out of sight. They were ready and willing to cross that blue water and pitch in to any activities, if called for, but not otherwise. Waverly had hammered that point home repeatedly.

"We can expect no local cooperation or support," he had warned. "And we do not want to provoke an international situation. There are plenty of people who would be only too happy to be able to pin on us the idea of an invasion by force. Hostile power. Interference in national affairs. That kind of thing. The Countess is a well known and respected figure. She would make full use of any such excuse, given the ghost of a chance."

So care was essential. Everyone understood that. The one thing none of them discussed, nor doubted, because it was so obvious, was that to Solo had fallen the hardest job of all, one with the most desperate risk. Desperate, and highly delicate, Kuryakin mused as he rolled over, and looked at his wristwatch.

"His plane is due to touch down in half an hour," he murmured. "Right on sunset. The Thrush big boys have been there almost an hour. She will be giving them the first sales pitch by now, and anxiously waiting for him with the new supply of modules. It's going to be tight. You sure he's fit?"

"Of course I'm not sure," Susan retorted, the edge on her voice revealing her tension. "I've said all along that he should have had at least another week under observation and therapy. But you would have it that we couldn't spare the time."

"Don't blame me, blame the circumstances," he said. And it was true.

As Solo had pointed out himself: "I'm overdue. I was instructed to fly direct to her from Miami, and the longer I'm delayed the more suspicious she is going to get. I know we have a cover story laid on, but that's too thin to be stretched very far."

And there had been another spur to speed. Keen-eyed observers had reported all the signs of another gathering of the big Thrush people at the candy floss palace. The reason was obvious, as Waverly had pointed out.

"The Countess works out her operations very carefully. Obviously this meeting follows on the acquisition of a new set of modules and is the moment for more sales. And each one of those sinister delegates will be carrying a quarter of a million dollars in cash. This is a moment that might not come again in years. We have to seize it."

So the plans had been worked out and set in motion at top speed. Solo had been able to help a great deal with inside information. He had been supplied with fake modules. He had described, as precisely as he could, the electronic setup, and the yacht carried equipment to jam any frequency the Countess might use, as a last resort. But, as Solo had been able to warn ahead of time,

"Be careful how you go, if you have to break in. That palace is booby-trapped like nothing you ever saw. Louise has it stuffed from floor to roof with priceless art treasures, and she takes no chances with them."