Текст книги "The Monster Wheel Affair"

Автор книги: David McDaniel

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 2 (всего у книги 9 страниц)

He helped her to her feet, and got her over to the couch. She slumped there, tear-drops staining the dark cloth until it seemed the same color as the rug around the body of the old man, who still lay where he had fallen in her defense.

Meanwhile, Napoleon was busy dragging the rest of the bodies into the room. Neatness is a virtue, he thought to himself as he arranged them along the wall in order of size. Besides, if we left them out in the hall, some bellboy would stumble over them eventually, and he might not understand at all. He stopped to consider this thought. I wonder, he said to himself, if I might not be getting a little callous towards death.

His next action was to check in with home base. Channel D put him in direct communication with Waverly, by way of an automatic local relay station and the nearest communications satellite, where it was beamed to New York, multiplexed on an apparently innocent carrier. It was a matter of seconds before the familiar gruff voice inquired impatiently as to what the problem seemed to be.

Solo gave him a complete report on the attempted– and half successful—assassination. By the time he had finished, the whole situation was clearer in his own mind for having been verbalized. His receiver was silent for several seconds.

"Your promise to MacKendricks makes it awkward," came the voice at last. "It would be simpler to take the girl and leave all the bodies behind. Can you get his body out undetected?"

"It'd be easier if I have some help, sir. And it appears now there's nothing in this that directly affects the local office, so I'd like your permission to call them in. I'll need some fairly complex investigating facilities too, to trace Schneider. And then there's the Sleeping Beauty, too. I doubt if the local law would know what to do with him."

"Permission granted," said the voice over seven thousand miles of ocean. "Those photographs haven't been seen here yet—find out if this girl knows anything about them."

Suzie was staring at the little silver tube, tear-streaks drying unnoticed on her cheeks. Now she sat up and held out a hand. "Here," she said unsteadily. "Let me talk to him."

She fumbled with it for a moment, locating the microphone. "Hello?" she said tentatively.

"Who is this?"

"My name is Suzanne Danz, of Chicago. I was on the Paxton Merchant when she was attacked and sunk by an unknown power. Mister MacKendricks saved my life then, and he saved it again today."

"I helped," said Napoleon under his breath, but she didn't hear.

"What are these photographs?" Waverly asked.

"I took almost a whole roll of pictures with a telephoto lens just before the ship was blown up. They were of a big rocket being launched from an island. Mac and Kurt were the only ones who knew the position we were at when we saw the rocket. Kurt stayed on the ship until the Captain ordered him off just before the bomb hit. We thought he'd been killed too but Mac saw him floating in the oil slick and pulled him in and we were just able to get him breathing again—we thought he had been killed by the concussion but Mac saved his life too and now he's dead and they shot him..."

Her voice was rising in pitch and she was breathing harder. Napoleon reached forward and gripped her arm hard. She stopped short and squeezed her eyes tight shut.

"Look," he said intently. "You've had a rough time, and it may be a while before it's all over. But you're as safe as you can be now. Mac is dead, but he died the best way a man can. And the best thing you can do now is stay calm and help us all you can. Okay?"

She nodded mutely, but didn't open her eyes. Napoleon gently removed the transmitter from her clenched fist.

"Mr. Waverly? Sorry for the interruption. A touch of reaction. Send Illya down as soon as those pictures come in. I'll get in contact with U.N.C.L.E. Capetown and give them a song-and-dance about but why I'm here without their knowledge. Anything else?"

"Nothing, as long as you continue to justify my faith in you. You can take care of yourself. Do so."

"Thank you, sir." Why was it Waverly always made an explicit statement of his confidence when conditions were worst? Oh well, it usually worked, and that was justification enough.

He thumbed the call button again, and requested Channel L.

Forty-five very busy minutes later he and Suzie were sitting in a neatly furnished office. The single survivor of the unsuccessful attack was being received downstairs by U.N.C.L.E.'s medical technicians, and prepared for a thorough interrogation which he would not even remember the next day. Also downstairs was the body which had once belonged to John Calvin MacKendricks, awaiting disposal in accord with his last wishes.

Upstairs Suzie Danz leaned back in a metal chair and addressed a microphone. "Well, we found Kurt Schneider floating in the oil, and after we pulled him in we looked around for a while, but there wasn't anybody else. And I guess that was about all."

"All right," said Napoleon. "What happened after that?"

"Nothing much. Well, the boat was stocked for eight, but we didn't have a radio. So we put up the sail and went south until Mac and Kurt thought we were in the main shipping lane, and then drifted around for seven days until we were spotted and found. Kurt took command, with Mac as his first mate, and set up food and water rationing. We had enough for another four days when the Ballyshannon took us aboard."

She smiled suddenly. "I lost everything except for my camera and my lenses and film. And I've got about six rolls of life in a lifeboat. I used a wide-angle, mostly, and I photographed just about everything. Maybe I can sell it to Life or National Geographic. I sent the film off after we got here, except for the roll I shot of the missile taking off. Mac took that. He said it was very important that it got directly to the right people, and he'd be sure it did." She looked at Napoleon. "I guess you're the right people."

Napoleon nodded. "We're going to need your help to find the other men who were in that lifeboat with you. Are you willing to work with us for a while?"

"I'm willing to go anywhere and do anything, for as long as it takes to get whoever is behind this. They murdered that ship and everybody on her, and they murdered Mac and tried to get me too. I'll say I'm willing to work with you!"

"Good." He leaned forward, stopped the tape recorder, and picked up the handset of a telephone with a flashing light in place of its dial. As he did so the light stopped flashing.

"Solo.... Good. Who's missing?" He scowled. "Figures. What about the other three?" He covered the mouthpiece momentarily and addressed Suzie. "Three of your shipmates have been traced already. Schneider is the only one we don't have a line on yet." He turned back to the telephone. "Good. Go ahead."

He repeated aloud, for her benefit: "Archie Gunderson signed on the Miyako Maru, bound for Hong Kong. We can meet him there. Alexei Kropotkin shipped out two days later for Rio de Janeiro on the Duke of York. Waleed al-Fadly..." His face fell slightly, but he continued: "... is beyond our reach. He was found knifed in an alley by the waterfront just last night. We'll have to move quickly to get to Gunderson and Kropotkin before the other side does." He addressed the telephone again. "Keep trying to trace Schneider. He's apparently the only one who can give us that location now.

"By the way, what about our guest downstairs? Have you found out his home port?" He listened, and nodded slowly. "Local boy, hired through channels for a routine kill. Not a chance of back-tracking him, either, I suppose. Okay—call me if anything comes up." He replaced the handset.

"My partner will be here in a few days," he said. "Then we will go off to Rio and Hong Kong, and see if Kurt may have told his erstwhile shipmates anything that could lead to his being found." He shook his head. "It's going to be quite a search if he didn't. The world is an awfully big haystack to lose one needle in."

Chapter 3: "What Did You Expect—Big Ben?"

The jet thundered down out of the deep blue South African sky. Below, Napoleon Solo and Suzie Danz stood in air-conditioned coolness listening to the muted sounds of airplanes outside the double glass windows and the metallic voice of a loudspeaker announcing the arrival of the flight from London. Illya was on that flight, and tucked in his bags were enlargements in full glorious color of a mysterious ICBM that had been launched a few weeks before.

Wheels smoked as braked tires vaporized against rubber-scarred concrete, and thrust-reversers drove the engines to an anguished scream. The BOAC jet rolled into the taxiway, slowing gently now, and crept at last into its berth. With a final sigh, the engines whined down to a stop.

Napoleon and Suze met Illya at the gate as he checked through customs. The sight of the diplomatic passport he wielded won instant cooperation from the guards, and a small trolly with a rather remarkable assortment of bags wheeled past them unchallenged.

Solo looked from the cart and the sweating redcap who propelled it to his partner. "What did you do," he asked under his breath, "bring all of Section Three with you?"

"Just a few necessities," said Illya casually, directing his native bearer towards the line of taxis with a wave of his hand. "In this uncertain world, you never know what you might need."

It took two taxis to get them back to the hotel. Determined not to involve local U.N.C.L.E. operations any more than necessary, and certain that the center of the enemy's interest had left Capetown with the departure of Kurt Schneider, they had assumed the roles of normal tourists. Almost normal—Suzie was under armed guard at all times, courtesy of the Solo Personal Protection Bureau.

The three of them huddled over Illya's briefcase, which he had hand-carried rather than leave with the rest of the luggage. Unstrapping the trick fasteners, he gently raised the lid and withdrew a large manila envelope.

"Here are your prints," he said, handing it to Suzie. "Sorry I couldn't bring back the original slides, but they're in a safe place. Perhaps sometime we can get them back to you."

She carefully undid the meal clasp and slipped out a thin stack of glossy color prints, eight by ten. In the center of each frame was a long thin white object which grew shorter, print by print, as well as less distinct. She examined them, one at a time. Then her face lightened. "Oh, of course. Foreshortening as it went higher. And that's why it gets grainier. Bigger enlargements."

Illya nodded. "These are blown up as much as possible without an inordinate loss of detail." He turned to Napoleon. "Section Three was most interested in the design of this missile. They say it's roughly two hundred feet long, diameter in proportion. If the frames were shot about a second apart, it was accelerating at some 300 feet per second, or a bit less than ten gees. But what really aroused comment were the differences here"—he pointed to the main stage of the rocket, clearly visible in the third picture—"and here." He pointed to the second stage and slid his finger up to the nose.

Napoleon looked at them closely, and knitted a thoughtful pair of eyebrows. "That's odd," he said finally, and Illya nodded.

"That's what they said, too."

Suzie put down the pile of prints she held, and looked over their shoulders. "What's odd?" she asked. "It looks like a common, ordinary ICBM to me."

"How many ICBM's have you known personally?"

"Not that many. But I've watched them on TV, and I've seen pictures of them. What makes this one so unusual, outside of being where it shouldn't be?"

"Can you tell the difference between, say, an Atlas-Agena and a Saturn Five?"

"Not unless I can see their license plates."

"Okay. These upper two stages are very much like the Agena—not exactly, but very much. Close enough that it's probably a patent infringement, if it matters. But this bottom stage is, as near as anyone can tell without poking around in the plumbing, the main stage from a Russian T 3-A, which is, frankly, more powerful than anything but our Saturn-V."

Illya nodded agreement. "Somebody has taken the best of both cultures and combined them. This may have been only a test, or it may have put something into orbit. Whichever it was, this combination is most practical, and potentially dangerous as a weapon."

The doorbell rang across the moment of silence that followed this statement. On the other side of the door, a winded team of bellhops was discovered standing beside a pile of luggage. Illya beckoned them in, watched while they bore their burdens into the room and set them about on the floor, on chairs and on the bed, and finally rewarded each of them with a crisp note of unseen but generous denomination.

Napoleon looked around at the stuff as the door closed again. "Well," he asked, "do we start to unpack, or do we divvy up the gear into portable lots before we take off for the far corners of the earth? Or do we just leave it here to startle the maid?"

"Golly," said Suzie, counting. "Ten, eleven, twelve bags. What all is in them, anyway?"

Illya's eyebrows raised slightly, and his gaze traveled smoothly around the room, checking the count. "I can tell you what is in eleven of them," he said. "Because that is how many I left New York with."

"Somebody else's bag must have gotten mixed in with yours by accident."

He shook his head. "In this business there are no accidents." He walked slowly among the luggage, looking at each item closely. He stopped by a small blue canvas bag, and put his ear up to it. A slight smile teased the corner of his mouth. "Marvellous," he said. "It's ticking."

Suzie gasped slightly, and cowered back against the nearest wall. "What are you going to do?"

"Disarm it, of course."

"Don't worry," said Napoleon reassuringly. "He's quite competent at this sort of thing. He's only had one bomb go off while he was working on it."

It took a moment for her to consider this, and then she looked hard at him. "And what happened? I suppose you'll tell me he was blown to bits?"

"Oh no—nothing happened. The bomb turned out to be a dud."

"It's quite true," said the soft voice from across the room. "But I can assure you I had a very bad fraction of a second there watching the detonator spark."

Suzie waited what seemed like a decent interval and then asked, "What are you going to do with this one—dunk it in water?"

"That went out several years ago. All the better time bombs these days are made with sodium metal in the detonator. Water will set them off before it renders the explosive harmless."

"In fact," said Napoleon, "it is quite possible to make a bomb so constructed that whatever you do to it in attempting to disarm it will set it off. Fortunately we haven't run into one yet."

Illya was feeling the bag very gently, and examining the zipper with a small magnifying lens. He shook his head slowly. "Quite true," he said. "For instance, I am fairly sure an attempt to open this zipper would result in detonation of the device."

Suzie looked at all the other bags and suitcases. "Haven't you got something here that will take care of it?"

Napoleon shrugged. "We might be able to X-ray it to find out where everything is inside it—but we couldn't be sure that it might not be wired with a small fluorescent screen so the X-rays would trigger it."

"Oh," she said in a small voice, and looked doubtfully across the room at Illya. "Well, what are you going to do?"

"Probe," said the Russian succinctly, producing a long thin knife from somewhere.

He drew the tip of the knife over a short distance on the side of the bag, and continued to stroke the area like a surgeon making a life-and-death incision. Gradually the scratch deepened. In a few seconds, a half-inch gash appeared in the canvas, and he stopped. "Excellent," he said softly, and folded the knife.

He turned, looking over the other bags scattered around the room, spotted one and nodded. From it he withdrew a flat metal box some twelve inches long. He crouched beside the ticking bag and opened the box.

The first thing he withdrew was a long thin tube perhaps ten inches long, with a small cup at one end and an elastic band which Illya slipped over his head, adjusting the cup to one eye. He touched something beside the eyepiece, and the other end of the tube glowed softly. He slipped that end in through the incision.

"All right," Suzie whispered to Napoleon. "What's he doing now?"

"That's a proctoscope—a fiber-optic illuminator. Basically it's a light-pipe with a wide-angle lens and a tiny light on one end, and his eye on the other end. He can look all over the inside now."

Illya's visible eye, which had been closed, opened now and rolled over in the direction of the kit. His free hand slipped out something else long and thin.

"The rest of the kit," Napoleon continued, "is a surgical kit, essentially. Each gadget in there has something different on the end. A gripper, a knife blade, a shear...Surgeons use them for what they call 'keyhole' operations. They can work inside you through little holes; less tissue damage, less of a scar."

Suzie nodded. "When I had my appendix out a few years ago the scar was only about an inch long."

"What do you see in there?" Napoleon asked his partner.

"Wires—a couple of batteries—a large block of something—a timing mechanism..."

"Then it really is a bomb!" Suzie said.

"What did you expect—Big Ben?"

She paused, considering that, and decided to let it pass. "What are you doing now?"

"Clipping wires."

"Oh."

Illya worked in silence for a minute, then said, "This is a fairly sloppy job of bomb-making. The zipper was wired, as I thought, but it wouldn't have gone off if I'd opened it—one of the connections had broken loose. An amateurish job of soldering, too." He paused, manipulating his instruments through the tiny hole. "I think I want a closer look at those batteries. And that detonator mechanism..." He pulled out one tool, picked up another, and continued working. After a few seconds, he let out a long breath, and said, "That's it."

Napoleon took a step forward as Illya stood up slowly and slipped the eyepiece of the proctoscope off his head. "Let's see."

The Russian agent was replacing his tools in their case, fitting each slender, delicate instrument back in the proper clips, and finally closing the lid and fastening the catches. Only then did he slide the zipper back.

The top of the bag opened neatly, and the two U.N.C.L.E. agents bent over it together.

"Look at the wiring. Shoddy," said Illya. "Simply shoddy."

Napoleon reached in and lifted out a block of something brownish. "Here's the charge. Looks like plastique of some kind." He reached in with his other hand and produced a small complex device. "And here's the detonator. Let's save them. They might come in handy."

"If they'd work when we needed them," said Illya. "The explosive looks all right, but the detonator mechanism seems to have some loose parts."

Napoleon shrugged. "We can always rig up a detonator of our own," he said. "And you never know when you may need a few pounds of high explosive." He tossed it idly from hand to hand while Illya continued to rummage about in the bag, muttering to himself.

Finally, with a soft grunt of surprise, he brought out a set of batteries and held them out for Napoleon to see. They were standard squarish 9-volt cells, but they were yellow, and the inscription on both sides was in Arabic.

Napoleon looked down at them, quite puzzled, and finally took them from his partner's hand. He held them up and examined them closely. Then he looked at Illya. "Egyptian?" he said, doubtfully.

Illya nodded. "Apparently. And that plastique is the type the French were using in Algeria just a few years ago. I would call it fairly likely that this bomb was sent by someone with a base in Egypt. I wouldn't be too surprised if it turned out to be an official operation of Egyptian Intelligence, in fact."

This time Suzie looked puzzled too. "Egyptian? But that couldn't have been their rocket, could it?"

"Not likely," said Illya.

"Especially," added Napoleon, "if this is a sample of their technology. I've seen more care go into the construction of a Molotov cocktail than this shows. I wouldn't trust whoever built this to fire a skyrocket."

Illya glanced sideways at him. "Don't belittle our opponents just because they failed once, Napoleon. There is more than enough high explosive there to damage this corner of the hotel severely, not to mention its inhabitants, and it could have gone off. Remember, contempt breeds carelessness."

"But Egyptian?" Suzie asked again. "How? And why? And for that matter..."

"I'm sure we will find out eventually, Miss Danz," said Illya. "Our assignment, in fact, insists upon it. But first we must find Kurt Schneider."

"And to do that," said Napoleon, "we will have to start by finding Alexei Kropotkin and Archie Gunderson. Suzie, you have all those pictures you took during your adventure in the lifeboat—let's get some enlargements made of the shots you consider to be most recognizable of both of them. And we may as well get one of Kurt while we're about it."

"The slides should be back tomorrow," she said. "I sent them to the Kodak lab in Johannesburg."

"Okay. We can save you some money and have the local U.N.C.L.E. darkroom run up enlargements for us. If would have been safer, by the way, if you'd given us the film to process. An accident in the lab could have been arranged."

"If the situation ever arises again, I'll be sure to remember," she said with a trace of irony in her voice.

"You do that," said Napoleon.

"Not to change the subject," said Illya, "but when we get the pictures, what do we do?"

"Time, as they so often say, is of the essence. You will head for the gay night life and sinful waterfront of Rio de Janeiro and look for your compatriot, Kropotkin. I will brave the teeming streets of Victoria in a search for a Swedish seaman named Gunderson. Suzie will wait here where it is safe, and..."

"I shall do no such thing," said Suzie stubbornly. "The last thing Mac told me was to stay with you and help you. Archie is smart, and suspicious. He knows he's being looked for by people interested in killing him, and he wouldn't talk to you. But he'll remember me, and if I say you're all right, he'll cooperate."

She turned to Illya. "Alexei will probably be easier to approach. In the boat he kept talking about how lonely he was for Russia—all you'll have to do is speak to him and he'll be so happy he'll talk all night."

"But first I have to find him."

Napoleon shrugged. "That shouldn't be difficult. After all, how many Russian sailors can there be in a port the size of Rio de Janeiro?"

"You would be surprised."

"Well, I'll bet there are a lot more Swedish ones in Hong Kong."

"But you'll have me helping you look," said Suzie.

Napoleon stopped and looked her over consideringly. "You know," he said, "that will just about make up for it."

She smiled.

Chapter 4: "You Know A Party Named Kropotkin?"

The waterfront area of Rio de Janeiro is not the sort of place chosen for portrayal in travel folders. For one thing, it smells. A tourist guide could conceivably describe the concatenation of odors encountered there as "exotic," but the tourist would do well to remember that this word is also applied to inedible foods and loathsome jungle diseases. To Illya, whose nose was fairly cosmopolitan, the place simply stank.

A few blocks away, black oily water lapped at corroding pilings and tenders bobbed quietly under night-shrouded piers. Here, a few figures moved in the streets, reeling between islands of noise and light. Illya reeled among them, the better to avoid attention.

But a man alone always gets some attention. A soft voice came from a shattered doorway: "Hey, sailor."

He turned and saw a figure in black. She stepped out, and a street-light half a block away shone off her leather vest and tight pants. She held an unlit cigarette. "Got a match?"

The flames lit her face dramatically. Her hair was long and as black as the rest of her costume; her eyes were bright and sensuous. She let the smoke trickle from between her lips in irregular puffs as she spoke. "My name is Yanara. You are looking for a girl, maybe?"

"Not right now," said Illya. "I've got to find a man first. I owe him some money. He's a Russian sailor, off the Duke of York. If I can find him, maybe I'll have time for you."

"Duke of York? Came in just today. Hey, sailor, I'll wait for you. All men from Duke of York go to A Fonte Sujo. Captain is friend of owner, all crew go for drinking. You find your friend there, I bet. Then you come back?"

Illya nodded, but privately he doubted whether U.N.C.L.E. would authorize this item on his expense account. "Where is it?" he asked her.

A Fonte Sujo was readily identifiable by one of the few real illuminated signs in the area. A pattern of green lights, rather patchily outlining something like a fountain, flashed on and off in front of it, and the sounds of music and celebration made their way past the swinging doors.

Inside, the atmosphere was compounded of smoke, sweat and profanity. Illya stood with his back to the door, squinting through the gray-blue haze, until he saw a sailor not too drunk to walk approaching the bar. He moved forward and arrived alongside him.

"Hello, mate," he said. "You off the Duke of York?"

The other's eyes tracked, centered, and focused. "Yeah—why not?"

"Lemme buy you a drink."

The slack mouth curled up at the corners. "Sure—why not?"

Raw liquor splashed into dirty glasses, and a wordless toast was raised and drunk. Without wasting time, Illya got to business.

"You know a party named Kropotkin? He was on your ship this run."

"Kropotkin? I wouldn't call'm a party—'s more like a street fight. Friend of yours?"

"I owe him some money, and I'd better pay him before I spend it all."

The sailor laughed, choked, and needed another glass of whiskey. "He was around here just a while ago—I saw him in the head. If he ain't shill here...still here...he's prob'bly gone back to the Duke."

"Thanks, mate. I'll look around here."

"Hey, how 'bout another drink with your pal before you go?"

"Sure," said Illya. "Why not?"

The photographs of the Russian sailor firmly in his mind, Illya wondered among the tables, staggering slightly, following an apparently random pattern which nevertheless took him near every man in the place. He wound up at the back, where a small partition separated a few tables from the rest of the floor. Alone at one of them, his back to the wall, his eyes roving suspiciously about him, sat his quarry.

Illya approached him slowly, and waited for the eyes to focus on him. The man was not drunk; he was alert, and obviously on the edge of nervousness. Illya held out a hand to him. "Zdrastvoutye, tovarich Kropotkin."

"Who are you?" came the answer, also in Russian.

"Illya Nickovitch Kuryakin. MacKendricks sent me."

"MacKendricks is dead. Somebody killed him for what he saw. But I saw nothing. Go away."

"Waleed al-Fadly saw nothing also, but he was killed even before MacKendricks."

"What do you want with me? I know nothing. Go away."

"I want to talk to you about Kurt Schneider. The people who killed Mac are after him, and we have to find him before they do."

"Who are you?"

"Have you ever heard of the U.N.C.L.E.?"

"Nyet."

One of the problems of being a secret organization, thought Illya, and said, "Then it would take too long to explain. But we can protect Kurt, and we must get some information from him."

"What kind of information? No, don't tell me. I don't want to know anything. Go away."

Illya shrugged and rose. Either a less direct or a more direct approach to interrogation was called for, and the bar was no place for either. Under the circumstances, he decided to wait and see which opportunity fate offered first.

He faded into the haze, and took a table where he could watch the door.

It was almost an hour later when Alexei Kropotkin stumbled through the crowd towards the exit. Two other men were reeling along with him, a total of six legs seeming scarcely enough to support and balance them all. Illya felt a twinge of frustration. Kropotkin backed up by two shipmates would be even less likely to feel coöperative, even if he was still sober enough to talk straight—which seemed doubtful.

Then Illya wondered carefully. Kropotkin had been rather pointedly alone before, and he didn't look like the type to become suddenly sociable. And he had been nursing a solitary beer. All things considered...

Illya stood up with studied unsteadiness, dropped some coins on the table and wandered towards the door.

Outside, fog was coming up from the harbor, and the air was warm and sticky. Illya hurried into direction the three men had turned, trotting on silent rubber-soled feet. Ahead he could hear the clatter of incautious footsteps on the pavement.

It was late, and the streets were almost deserted. Here and there couples hurried to their various destinations, and occasional solitary figures reeled from doorway to doorway or strode purposefully on unguessable errands. But somewhere ahead, seen dimly through the floating veils of white, two men supporting a third hurried more than drunks would have been expected to. And Illya came behind them, but faster.

Then the street was empty, and the trio stopped. Illya faded into a shadow just as one of them turned around for a check of the vicinity. A light from somewhere caught an unexpected glitter in the other's hand. Illya propelled himself from hiding, feet pounding across the twenty-odd feet that separated him from the group.

His sudden appearance caught the two men by surprise, and they dropped their burden. One flashing hand struck the wrist of the knife-wielder, and the blade spun away into the dark. The other was reaching for his own weapon, but a soft shoe caught him in the pit of the stomach and he did a passable imitation of the knife.

The first man fell back a few steps, tugging at his pocket. Illya stepped forward and took his wrist in a bone-aching grip. "Don't you know it's dangerous to play with knives?" he inquired politely. "Sometimes they slip, and you get cut yourself."