20 - The Corfu Affair (8 page)

Klasser stiffened, squirmed back in his chair. "You shall not drill a hole in my head! It is out of the question!"

"I expected you to be concerned, Herr Doktor. But, as you shall see, it is a simple and painless operation, taking no more than twenty minutes or so. I will do it now, for you to see, on M. Solo!"

He had seen this coming. He strained helplessly at his bonds as she moved round the table to come near him. From somewhere she had taken up a slim case, from which the now took a hypodermic, which she held expertly.

"You shall see. I will insert one unit into M. Solo's brain. From that moment he will appear to be normal, but will be my slave. It is my regret, of necessity, that I cannot perform this operation on myself, but I will be able to control him quite well. And use him. I have done it before. And then, gentlemen, you will be convinced!"

CHAPTER SIX

THE taxi fled down the Rue Hebert as if trying to qualify for the Monte Carlo rally. In the back, Illya Nikovetch Kuryakin ignored the speed. He had ridden in Paris taxi cabs before. He had done many odd, uncomfortable and dangerous things before, but never had he felt about them as he did about this one. For some inexplicable reason a sense of doom had perched on his shoulder all through the operation, ever since he had parted from Napoleon Solo.

Not that he'd had much time for brooding. One week had been spent in saturating himself in technical information, then the next two weeks had kept him inside the Soviet Union. There he had been passing himself off as Maurice Krasnin, a French-born Slav, a biomedical technician with one foot almost outside the law. Three days in Moscow had been enough to create the necessary background, the rest of the time he had spent in Tashkent, as the undercover center of the Soviet shadow world of plastic surgery and crooked science. His life had been a fiction, but he had to smile, thinly, now as he realized how easily it could have been true. There was a vast untapped potential in his mother country for men who could mould and manipulate the external appearances, legally and otherwise. His pretended purpose had been to forge a link between centers in Tashkent and the notorious possibilities inherent in the Paris center of St. Denis. It would have been terribly easy to really do just that.

So on the surface the project had been easy, but there were undercurrents that he had not cared for, signs that meant, to his eye, a breaking down of the values that had kept the Soviet Union going along a hard path. The subtle demoralization of affluence was having its effect here just as it was everywhere else. While he no longer had any loyalties to the Soviet, he did have boyhood memories and a degree of fellow feeling for the Russians, and the prospect had chilled him.

Adding to his gloom was the need to create an appearance. By habit he could be comfortable with a degree of untidiness, but that was not enough. People had certain fixed mental images about Russians, and he had to do his best to live up to them. Furthermore, this was no case for any painted-on disguise. A man who intends to move among highly skilled cosmetic surgeons needs more than greasepaint and facial putty to create an impression. For three weeks he had not shaved, and was now sporting a yellow wisp of beard disreputable enough to satisfy the wildest imagination. In the same period he had washed his hair regularly with a hard soap, deliberately neglecting to rinse it properly. As a consequence his hair was straw-yellow, dull and spiky. He wore a dark chunky sweater, a coarse-weave jacket with a touch of fur at the lapel, hairy pants and high boots. The overall effect was convincing, but highly uncomfortable to one of his temperament. He preferred to be inconspicuous.

The taxi slowed, halted, and he scrambled out, dismissing his inner preoccupations and tensing himself to match wits with the people in charge, here at St. Denis Surgery-Cosmetique. From the outside, no one would have taken the dingy old building for a medical house of any kind, but once inside the funereal doors and into the lobby all was hygienic chrome and glass, plus efficiency. A lady receptionist advanced to take his card. She managed, without effort, to make her plain black dress look chic, as only a Parisienne can. After a glance she nodded, moved away, gesturing him to follow.

"
Venez avec moi, monsieur
. I will discover if M. Lafarge is free to receive you. One moment."

She went before him to a desk, touched an intercom button and spoke in a rapid undertone. Beyond the wall, in his luxurious paneled office, Managing-Director Louis Lafarge hushed his very important guest with an apologetic palm and attended to the call. Nodding, he made a quick decision, then turned again to his guest.

"A thousand pardons, monsieur, but you will realize that business is business. If you will please retreat into the next room I will dispose of this matter very quickly and then we can talk more." The covering door had barely closed when a discreet tap at the outer door announced the receptionist.

She entered one pace, stood aside, and announced, "Mr. Boris Krasnin, from Tashkent, M. Lafarge."

"
Bonjour, monsieur
!" Kuryakin inclined his head, managed to convey the impression of a heel click without actually doing it, and advanced over the carpet. "I believe you are expecting me?"

"Of course!" Lafarge beamed and made gestures, but his alert attention missed nothing of his visitor's appearance, or his faultless accent. "I have your dossier right here. Yvette! You will request Gerda to come to me, at once, please! Now, M. Krasnin. A seat? You would care for a cigarette, no? An aperitif, then? It is good!" He produced a bottle and poured busily while making conversation. "You will pardon if I seem naive, but it is a strange thing to me that your people should be interested in our kind of work. After all, the Soviet Union has a great name for medicine and surgery, and the many inventions of all kinds. Yet you wish to do business with us?"

"It is not so strange. Tashkent may be just a name to you, monsieur, but think. That area is now Uzbekistan, a preferred name in the new regime, but it was once Bokhara, famous for arts, beauty, the bourgeois things. The spirit is still there, but driven underground. It is not healthy, nowadays, to want to be beautiful, or different. Yet people want it, and where there is a demand, there will be a supply."

"Quite so!" Lafarge nodded agreement. "That is one rule which does not change." He looked up as a tap on the door heralded an interruption. With a scowl he called out, "
Entrez
!"

The door opened to admit a lean, dark-haired woman whose face was set in a severe and suspicious expression. With no more than a glance at Lafarge, she advanced to where Kuryakin sat, brought her left hand from behind her back to thrust it in front of him, fist clenched.

"
Kak eto nazivayetsya po rooski
?" she demanded, and opened her hand to reveal a small gilt and red enameled tube.

"
Pomada dlya goob
," he sneered. "Are you trying to trick me, madam? Or you, monsieur?" He turned to spear Lafarge with an icy blue gaze. "This was so obviously prepared, to have this stupid woman brought here, and for her to ask me to give the Russian name for a lipstick. What are you trying to prove?"

Lafarge spread his hands and shoulders in an eloquent shrug. "It was no more than a precaution, M. Krasnin. I have to be sure. Identities and names are so easy to fake. The name Krasnin means nothing to me."

"Names seldom mean anything to anyone. In England, once, I knew a girl called Cecilia Duff, if you can believe that. It was her real name. So what have you proved?"

"Enough." Lafarge was humble. "You must realize that in this business one has to be careful. There are secret formulae and techniques. And spies. And you do not look like a surgeon, or a technician."

"What do I look like, a Cossack?" Kuryakin did not say Cossack, but used an idiomatic equivalent that had such shocking associations that Gerda, who knew it, sucked in her breath in outrage. He swung his sword-like stare on her again.

"Does that shock you,
polyak
?"

Gerda cringed. In addition to her outrage, to be called Polish was too much, especially as she was and had worked hard to conceal the fact.

"I am not a Pole!" she denied shrilly.

"Then you must learn not to neigh like one. Have you any more little tricks to perform?"

She glared at him, compressed her thin lips, ducked her head at Lafarge, then scuttled out, shutting the door after her. The managing-director of St. Denis Surgery-Cosmetique made haste to repair the damage in relations.

"Please banish the whole unfortunate incident from your mind, my dear M. Krasnin. It was terribly gauche. I apologize. Now, which particular field of cosmetic surgery are you interested in?"

They talked generalities for a time, but Kuryakin was still on his guard. Lafarge was no fool. It was instructive to see how his expression tightened at the mention of skull and head surgery.

"I cannot speak on that section, M. Krasnin. Madame la Comtesse is the expert on that. No doubt you will have the opportunity to speak to her in person sometime soon. Now, perhaps you would like to see round the laboratories and surgeries? Good!" He touched an intercom and spoke briefly, then rose. "Yvette will show you the way. Our chief surgeon awaits you. I think you will be impressed, M. Krasnin."

With the visitor departed, Lafarge settled back in his seat to think. Illegal surgery is not the most active market in the world. A pipeline from Russia could easily bring in a flow of patients. Profits. Madame la Comtesse would be pleased! M. Lafarge was beginning to smile to himself as his banished guest came from the far room and stood staring down at him.

"You know who that character was you just entertained?"

"Of course. M. Boris Krasnin, of Tashkent—" Lafarge let the words die into uneasy silence at his very important visitor's headshake. "No?"

"Definitely not, my friend. That repulsive and scruffy character was none other than Illya Kuryakin. An U.N.C.L.E. agent. One of their best."

"You are sure of this?"

"Absolutely positive."

Lafarge seemed to shrink. "An U.N.C.L.E. agent, here? What could he want? What can they suspect? There will be a raid!"

"Take it easy, now, Louis. He's on his own, a loner. I know his ways very well. When you're working a charade like that you have to do it alone, to cut down the chances of a slipup. As for what he's after, that doesn't matter much, not now."

"But it does! It matters a great deal!" Lafarge grew excited. "We do not want trouble, not that kind. We avoid publicity, always. He must be stopped. Eliminated!" A he reached for his intercom once more.

"Hold it right there! You say you don't want publicity, and I can understand that, but if you send some of your boys to tangle with him you'll get publicity that will turn your hair white overnight. He doesn't stop easy. I know him that well. He is very good—or very bad—depending on your point of view."

"Then what shall I do? I do not want U.N.C.L.E. agents here!"

"Don't worry about a thing. You have the address of his hotel? All right, just treat him nice and let him go back there. I'll take charge from that point. You just leave it all to me. I can handle him!" And Napoleon Solo grinned evilly down at Lafarge. "Oh yes." he said confidently, "I know his ways. I can handle him!"

It was late that same afternoon as Illya Kuryakin shut the door of his hotel room after him and leaned on it wearily. He was thankful to be able to relax for the first time in many hours. His encounter with chief surgeons and technicians had gone very well but it had been a strain, and he was not looking forward to maintaining the pretence very much longer. He would have to find what he was looking for quickly. Just now, though, all he wanted was a rest. He glanced round the large barn-like room he had acquired, and liked it. As in so many of the old, large, expensive Paris hotels, this very top suite, called the
chambre de courier
, was an awkward and misshapen afterthought, but it had a certain charm, and a truly magnificent view.

He crossed to the window to study the far-stretching roofscape. Rising out of it like some fantastic island stood the gilt-wreathed dome of the Invalides. Up here, high above the luxury level, one felt like a beggar at the gates of a great city, in it but not quite of it. The feeling suited him very well. He shrugged off his jacket, moved to the bed, paused a moment to admire its brass-bound massiveness, then heaved up and stretched out on it, kicking off his boots and wriggling deep into the white counterpane. An idle moment like this was a rare treat and he savored this one as far as he could stretch it. Then, sighing, he got out his communicator and flicked it into action with a practiced finger.

"Overseas relay," he requested, and traced the impossible outline of a flower on the wallpaper while he waited for the link.

"Is that you, Mr. Kuryakin?"

"Yes, sir. No snags so far. The managing-director and technical staff of St. Denis seem to have accepted me, after a bit of preliminary suspicion. I've had a general look over their facilities."

"Good beginning. Don't try to rush it."

"Couldn't if I want to. Their facilities are really extensive, and first class. There was a lot I didn't see, and some that called for explanations that I didn't get. They have four highly qualified embryologists on the staff, for one thing."

"Indeed! But you saw nothing to account for the theft of the communication modules?"

"No, sir. They'd be easy to hide, and impossible to detect unless one was in use. Anything new from Napoleon, on the Corfu end?"

"Hmm!" Waverly sounded peevish all at once. "News, you say? I have had reports, of a kind. The last I had was three days ago, from Turin."

"Turin? What on earth was he doing there?"

"I wish I could tell you. All he would say was that he was on the trail of something important but with no time to tell me what. It is most irritating!"

Kuryakin grinned as he shut off his instrument. Waverly was sparing with emotive words. For him to describe a situation as irritating was the equivalent of a string of lurid curses from anyone else. And, to be sure, Napoleon's behavior was curious. He had been staring absently at his little communicator for some seconds before he noted something highly significant about it. Right on the pencil-type tip a tiny neon glowed faintly. Just before leaving U.N.C.L.E. Headquarters, Section Three had presented him with this modified communicator. Jeremy Cronshaw, the technician working on the problem, had explained: "If you're anywhere within a half mile of one of those modules, if it's in use, you'll get a glow from the lamp. It's not directional, I'm sorry, but at least it'll tell you if you're warm."