Текст книги "The Monster Wheel Affair"

Автор книги: David McDaniel

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He twisted at the wrist he held, pulling it out of the pocket, and another knife clattered to the stones. An application of pressure and a foot behind the other's ankles brought him to his knees with a gasp. "Quem mandou você?" he asked. "Who sent you?"

Shifting his grip to his left hand, he fumbled briefly for the dropped knife. He brought it up slowly, level with the other's eyes. "Somebody paid you to get this particular sailor," he said softly. "Who was it?"

His subject's mouth remained stubbornly closed, but his eyes were very wide and focused on the point of the knife as it moved slowly back and forth like the swaying head of a coiled cobra.

"Would you have trouble breathing with your nose split?" asked Illya gently. "Or I could put your eyes out—very slowly. But I wouldn't do that until last." He touched the tip of the blade very lightly to the man's cheek and began to press. "It will be harder to talk when both your cheeks have been opened."

"No—no! I don't know who he was. A man with dark skin—like an Indio he was. But a strange accent. He paid us good money, and gave us a picture of the man, and his name—a funny name. He just said to take him out and kill him, and make it look like an ordinary street killing. There are many of them."

Illya considered this. "Where did he find you?"

"We met in Tiradentes Square. He told some people he needed a job done, and we were the cheapest who applied. It was all cash in advance."

"And you went ahead with the job after having been paid?"

"But of course, senhor," said the man, with a trace of injured pride in his voice. "Raul and I are honest men."

Slowly Illya let the knife down. The story was simple enough to be true, and nothing could be done about it. Tiradentes Square was the most likely spot in Brazil to find bargain-priced murderers, and every agent in the western hemisphere knew it. These scum probably deserved to die the same kind of death they had intended for Kropotkin, but in their world it would come for them soon enough, and unnecessary death was neither his specialty nor part of his assignment. He released the man's wrists and stepped back.

"All right. You've earned your money. Now get out of here and take your brother with you. He'll feel better in a couple of days."

The man got slowly to his feet, and spoke hesitantly. "Uh, senhor...My knife?"

"What?"

"You have my knife."

Illya looked at him, wondering if he understood the implication. "That's right."

"Uh, I would like to have it back. It cost much money. It is a good knife." He gathered a little courage, and held out a hand. "Senhor, my wife would be very angry if I came home without it. She would think I sold it for wine. And I need it—to earn my living with."

Illya stared at the unsuccessful assassin, and shook his head slowly. "You'd better get started before I give you back your knife point first. I don't like you."

"But senhor—you don't know my wife..."

Illya took a menacing step towards him, and he fell back a pace. "Can you leave it in the alley after we go? I could come back for it later."

"Go!" shouted Illya angrily, as he felt the beginnings of sympathy rising for this amazingly inept little man, and unwilling to show him any more mercy that absolutely necessary.

Raul was still moving, down on the pavement some distance away, clutching spasmodically and gasping painfully. The knife-owner helped him to his feet and supported him as they started away. After a few steps he turned once more to say, "You could just toss it back in the alley..."

Illya cocked his arm to a throwing position, and the two scuttled away into the darkness.

Bright Brazilian sunlight poured golden across the sofa in the suite at the Leme Palace Hotel, where Illya had brought Alexei Kropotkin the night before. The sailor, with administrations of coffee and thiamine pills, had recovered nicely from the aftereffects of the chloral hydrate he had ingested along with his last beer.

His two would-be killers had also been impatient to get the job over with, and had taken him along while he was still conscious, but unable to control his movements.

He nodded in agreement with Illya's comment on his luck. "With two balvani like that, they could as easily have given me too much rather than too little. And then they wouldn't have needed the knives."

"Did you understand what they were saying?"

"I could hear them, but I don't know the language. This Portuguese is beyond me except for a few necessary words like cerveja and puta, and they didn't get mentioned."

Illya had spent most of an hour convincing Alexei of the facts as far as they were known. He even went so far as to tell him about the bomb in his baggage in Capetown, though not so far as to tell him where Napoleon and Suzie had gone. He started to explain about the rocket, but Kropotkin stopped him again. "Nyet. I do not understand, so do not tell me. The less I know of it the happier I shall be."

"But you do know something," said Illya. "Kurt Schneider talked to you before you all split up in Capetown. Mac had implied there might be trouble about what you had seen..."

"I saw nothing! Nitchevo!"

"You saw the Paxton Merchant being blown up by a guided missile, and that is enough. But we must find Kurt Schneider. With MacKendricks dead, he is the only man left who knows where that island is. He must have told you something."

Kropotkin lay back on the couch, his forearms over his eyes. "We were talking about going our various ways, that last night. We had dinner, all six of us, and after Mac took Suzie back to the hotel, the rest of us went to...well, someplace else for a celebration. We'd been at sea a long time," he said in faint apology, and continued. "There was some trouble at first—they wouldn't let Waleed in on account of his skin, but Kurt and Archie and I told them he was as white a man as ever walked through their dirty doors, and offered to take the whole place apart for them if they tried to keep him out, and they talked it over for a minute and sort of saw it our way." He smiled in memory, and then his face clouded over suddenly. "And then somebody killed him, just like they tried to kill me last night!" He pounded a great fist on the upholstered arm of the sofa, and swore bitterly in Russian. "Svolochi! He was a nice little guy. They didn't have no call to kill him."

"What did Kurt say about hiding?" Illya asked, after several seconds of silence.

"Nothing. Archie wanted to know, so we could sort of keep in touch. But Kurt just said he was going down in something. He and Archie spoke German between themselves, mostly, but English with me. He and Archie got to be good friends. Kurt missed Germany as much as I miss Byelorussia, and Archie knew his country well. They would talk for hours about it—I had no one to talk to about my homeland. Then they would remember me, and apologize. But all Kurt ever told me was that he would be hiding under something. I think, maybe like digging a hole down under a rock. That was what he said—he'd be going down under something."

"Was that all?"

"I'm afraid so. I owe you a great debt, Illya, and I cannot pay it properly without information—but I have given you all I have."

Illya shrugged and rose to his feet. "You'd better stay hidden for a while," he said. "Whoever is behind this is not likely to stop until he's sure you're safely out of the way. Do you have someplace to go?"

Kropotkin nodded. "There is a place on the Santa Rosalia, sailing from Buenos Aires in five days. I can get my gear from the Duke today; these mysterious people will think I am dead for a while anyway when I am not on the ship. And then I shall go under another name. I can get across the border—I have friends in Uruguay—and then I shall disappear. But where can I see you again, my friend? After all, for saving my life I should at least buy you a drink."

"Look me up if you ever dock in New York," said Illya.

"New York?" Kropotkin smiled widely. "And are there good Russian restaurants there? I miss the food of my home very much."

Illya nodded. "Very good ones. But you may be in danger there for some time. I suggest you stay in hiding for several months, and enjoy the foreign food. You would not enjoy the finest piroshki if you swallowed them with a cut throat."

Kropotkin slapped himself on the chest. "I can take care of myself."

"Perhaps. But stay out of dark alleys, and don't drink with strangers—even Russians."

Section II: "They Built Themselves A Monster Wheel..."

Chapter 5: "Neu-Schloss? Where's That?"

Two days before Illya Kuryakin fought in a hot, fog-filled alley in Rio de Janeiro, a quarter of the way around the world a young man in a white coat had looked up from a tracking telescope and called to an older man. The strange tone in his voice brought his superior at once.

"Doctor—here's the source of those signals. It matches the radar trace."

"Well, what is it?"

"Uh...I'd rather you looked yourself, sir, before I describe what it looks like to me."

The old man bent to the eyepiece and touched the focusing control. He stayed there for several seconds, then finally spoke without removing his eye from the telescope. "It looks like a wheel—a monstrous wheel. Turning slowly without a central hub. I can see a pair of opposed spokes. Hmm. It could well be two hundred feet across, as the radar scan indicated."

"But, Doctor—what is doing there?"

After several seconds the answer came, distant and distracted. "A good question. A very good question. And one which, in a few days, the world may well be asking. What is it doing there?"

It was actually four days before photographs and official statements were released to the press of the world—or as much of the world as had a press that could demand such things. The photographs were blurred and grainy, demonstrating the scientific fact of atmospheric interference with serious attempts at astronomical photography, but revealing very little about the thing they called the "Monster Wheel." The statements varied between "No Comment" and "Steps Are Being Taken," neither of which were any more satisfying than the photographs. Flying saucer societies hailed the impending arrival of delegations from their favorite planets. Military men in all parts of the world chewed their nails, and talked to themselves late into the night. "It's got to be Theirs, but why haven't They announced it? And if it's ours, why haven't we announced it, and why haven't they told me? I'm important—I have a right to know these things." The public glanced over their shoulders shortly after sunset, saw a bright fast-moving star, and said, if they noticed it, "Huh! Another satellite. Big one, looks like." And the Monster Wheel said nothing, but twittered and hummed and buzzed on a couple of very high radio frequencies. Nothing could be made of the telemetered signals.

And in the city of Kowloon, across Victoria Harbour from Hong Kong, Napoleon Solo and Suzie Danz were occupied with the search for a missing sailor.

They had arrived at Kai Tak airport the same day the Miyako Maru tied up at the Whampoa docks, and had been there to meet her. The crew would be given no shore liberty until the task of unloading had been completed, but patience was a virtue Napoleon was cultivating. Unobtrusively, he and Suzie had taken a place near the forward gangplank to scan the faces of the workers on the deck, and to watch them as they left the ship as evening drew on.

At length the line of men checked out with the first mate at the head of the gangway and the last of them hurried to solid land in search of whatever shore leave held for them. Suzie turned to Napoleon, with a puzzled expression. "Are you sure this was the right ship?"

Napoleon looked up at the nearest life preserver and read off the characters on it. "Miyako Maru. That's what U.N.C.L.E. intelligence told us. Let's make polite inquiries aboard."

He swung up the ramp and greeted the mate with the clipboard politely. "We're looking for a friend of mine named Archie Gunderson. Has he gone ashore yet?"

The mate looked at him suspiciously, and then at his list. "Yah. He go ashore mebbe ten, fifteen minutes ago."

Napoleon registered disappointment. "I don't suppose he mentioned where he'd be going?"

"Nah. Dey get der pay, dey go ashore. Mebbe dey come back, mebbe dey don't. How come you want him?"

"Well, like I said—I'm an old friend of his. We were on the...ah...the Nancy Brig together ten years ago."

"You don' look like you ever work freight."

"Well, it's been a long time. Look here," he went on, producing a thousand-yen note, "I'd sure appreciate it if you could find out where he went, or when he'd be back."

The mate looked at the money without a change of his sour expression. "I tell you he gone—he gone. You want a lie for your money?"

Napoleon considered this, then reluctantly folded the note back into its hiding place. "Ah...no. But if you see him..."

"I tell him you look for him."

"No, don't do that either. I want to surprise him. After all, he hasn't seen me for quite a while." He added a laugh that sounded foolish even to himself, and started down the ramp again. The mate looked after him, then shook his head slightly and returned to the manifests.

He shrugged at Suzie. "He must have gotten past us. The Keeper of the Way up there says he went ashore ten or fifteen minutes ago."

"But I didn't see him. And I would have recognized him."

"Maybe he's grown a beard."

"He grew one while we were in the lifeboat. Not a big one, but I know how he'd look. Napoleon," she said, "either he's still on that ship or he left as soon as she docked and that man is trying to protect him. Or maybe"—her voice dropped—"maybe that man killed him and threw the body overboard, and now he'll try to prove he actually went ashore and will never be seen again!" She looked up the side of the ship suspiciously to the thin figure that leaned on the railing, silhouetted against the early evening sky, still working over his clipboard. "I think we should go up there and make sure."

"How?"

"Well—ask him, I guess."

"And hope he reveals something out of surprise?"

"It works in the detective stories—and anyway, you can threaten him."

"Look, Suzie—we are in a foreign country. If U.N.C.L.E. wasn't pretty highly regarded, I wouldn't be able to carry this gun at all. The government wouldn't like it if I started waving it around to impress people. Besides, it's bad form."

She clenched her little fists and made a face. "All right then, you wait here! I'll go up there and see what I can scare out of him!"

And she stamped to the gangplank and started up. Napoleon was right behind her—after all, he had a responsibility here too.

Suzie stepped past the railing and began fiercely without even waiting for the man to look up. He did soon enough.

"Now look here," she said. "It's very important that we find Archie Gunderson as soon as possible. I know he didn't leave this ship in the last two hours. Now where is he, and what have you done with him?"

The mate lifted his head, looked her over slowly and carefully, and said nothing. His eyes flicked briefly over her shoulder, then returned to his work, ignoring her protest.

Napoleon had caught the glance, and looked down at his wristwatch. The silver case had a large enough flat area to serve as an unobtrusive mirror, and he twisted his wrist slightly, scanning the deck behind them. There was a figure in the door to the wheelhouse. It was too dark to see clearly, but it seemed to be holding something.

The U.N.C.L.E. agent didn't lower his arm but let it slip inside his coat. While the little automatic shouldn't be waived about casually, it wasn't there just to compliment the color scheme of his ensemble.

A soft, deep voice from behind him stopped his hand just as his fingers closed around the butt.

"Don't try it mister. I ain't a very fast shot, but it'd take you a while to turn around."

Suzie whirled around at once, and Napoleon instinctively grabbed for his gun, expecting a repeat of her indecisive action in Capetown. The automatic was halfway out and he was on one knee facing the big blond-bearded man in the doorway as Suzie cried, "Archie! Don't shoot him!"

She didn't specify whom she was addressing, but both men heeded her suggestion, probably fortunately for both of them.

Archie frowned doubtfully, not lowering his .45. "Is he okay, Miss Suzie?"

"Oh yes! He's from U.N.C.L.E., and he saved my life when they killed Mac! Did you know about that? You must have."

The big man nodded, and the gun muzzle drooped slowly. "When I heard about Mac and Waleed, I t'ought somet'ing big was wrong, and I t'ought I'd be ready if it came after me. And when I see you with this man, I t'ink maybe they make you find me."

"Archie! You don't think I'd do something like that!"

He lifted his shoulders slightly. "They can get pretty bad to a girl, Miss Suzie. That's why I was ready to kill him."

Napoleon rose awkwardly to his feet, restored his U.N.C.L.E. Special to its accustomed place, and brushed at his clothes. "Well, I'm glad you didn't have to." He stuck out a hand, half expecting a bone-crushing grip. "My name is Napoleon Solo."

Gunderson shifted the automatic to his left hand and shook. The grip was firm, but not powerful. The man knew have to use his strength, which would make him doubly dangerous in a fight. He's blue eyes were cool, and alert. "U.N.C.L.E.?" he said. "I t'ink I remember Mac talking about it one time, two-three years ago. And if Suzie likes you, I'm satisfied."

He remembered the automatic in his left hand and tucked it back in the waistband of his trousers, then called across to the first mate, who had stood unmoved, even during the imminent shooting match: "Okay, Fish-eye. Signal if somebody else comes looking around the ship. We'll be in the wheelhouse for a little while."

Then they were seated around a small table. Gunderson was interested in the circumstances of Mac's death and clapped Suzie proudly on the shoulder when Napoleon told of her part in the battle. He could offer no possible explanation for the interest of Egyptian agents, unless that country had a secret missile capability. "I don't think they have," he rumbled. "But it is true that a lot of Germans went to Egypt when the War ended." Napoleon noticed his Scandinavian accent seemed to lessen as he talked with them, and made a mental note to keep an eye on this man who seemed, on examination, to be rather more than the simple sailor he appeared on the surface.

"Possibly they were hired by another country," Solo suggested. "But the question remains as to just what island you saw the missile fired from. Aerial reconnaissance of the whole area has found many tiny volcanic islands, none of which show any signs of being a missile launching site. And as I'm sure you know, it takes quite a bit of hardware on the ground to get a modern missile into space."

Archie nodded. "And this is why you have to find Kurt. Well, all I can tell you isn't very much. Kurt and Alexei and Waleed and I had a sort of celebration in Capetown the night before we were to sail—no, after you and Mac left, Miss Suzie. We were...well, we were sailors out for a last night on the town, and it wasn't the sort of thing you could have come along for. We all said where we were going from Capetown, and Kurt didn't want to say at first. But I think there might be trouble after us, so I keep after him. And finally he got a little drunk, and whispered the name of the place. Neu-Schloss, he said. And I remember it. Neu-Schloss."

Napoleon leaned back with a sigh and a smile of satisfaction. They had their goal in sight at last. He thought a minute, and frowned. "Neu-Schloss? Where's that?"

The sailor smiled a little and stood up. "I start wondering that myself when I hear about Mac being murdered." He pulled down a large book from the shelf and latched the door again. "Take a look in the gazetteer."

Napoleon accepted the book, opened to the middle and started flipping through the N's. "Neurara, Neuruppin, Neuse River," he said. "Neuss, Neustadt.... There are certainly enough Neustadts.... Neustrelitz, Neu-Ulm, Neuville, Neuwarp, Neuwied..." He stopped and ran his finger back up the column. "Hm."

"I checked the other atlases here. There is no such listing."

"Could he have been making a joke?" Suzie asked.

Gunderson shook his massive head. "I don't think so. He seem very serious about it. He tell me because he say I am smarter than the other two, and if there is trouble he trust me to know what to do. But he was pretty drunk, I guess."

Napoleon saw his trail evaporating like a mirage. He closed the book with a deep and heartfelt sigh. "This will take some thought," he said. "Some heavy thought. And possibly even some detective work." He leaned back in the chair and thought until Suzie interrupted him.

"Have you thought of anything?"

He straightened up. "As a matter of fact I have. It's getting rather late, and I don't recall having eaten for several hours."

She nodded. "That's worth thinking about."

"That's even worth doing something about. Why don't the three of us go for dinner someplace?"

"Marvelous," said Suzie, without a trace of sarcasm in her tone. "Do you know a good place?"

"I seem to remember a good restaurant at the corner of Mongkok Road and Reclamation Street."

"The Yen Chi," said Archie unexpectedly. "A good place."

Napoleon shrugged. "If you like Chinese food."

Chapter 6: "I'll Show You A Magic Trick."

Dinner was excellent. Suzie was at least enough of a world traveler not to ask what she was eating, and in fact was able to recognize most of it. The meal was leisurely and enjoyable, but Archie grew uneasy as the hour grew later, and pointed out that wandering the streets of Kowloon after dark was asking for trouble, with unknown powers almost certainly after them. Over drinks, Napoleon and Suzie were discussing the situation.

"It's early morning in New York, and a couple of hours later in Rio, if Illya's still there. When we get to the hotel, I'll check in and see what results our South American department has had in this investigation. I hope he had better luck than we did."

"And if he didn't?"

"We'll all go home and wait for our international network of eyes and ears to send word on Schneider. You can find a needle in the biggest haystack if you have enough people looking, for long enough."

"But how long do we have?"

Napoleon took a drink from his iced glass and rolled it around in his mouth a while before swallowing and answering, "We don't even know what's going on on that island. The rocket you saw launched obviously wasn't an attack on anybody—that we would have heard about. It might have put something small into orbit; anything big would certainly have been spotted. There are a surprising number of people all over the world who are paid to do nothing but stare at the sky and take notes on anything that moves. Or it could have been a test. It may have failed; it may have succeeded. If it succeeded, they may be very close to doing...whatever it is they want to do. If it failed, they may still be very close. Or they may not. The only way to find out without finding them first is to wait until they either announce themselves, or they succeed. And then it will probably be too late to stop them, if indeed they even should be stopped."

"Who decides whether they should?" asked Archie.

"Not me. And in something as big as this could be, not my superior either. There's someone—several someones, for all I know—over him. This business could be big enough to plunge the whole world into atomic war in a matter of hours if something went wrong."

Suzie shuddered and finished her drink quickly. "Let's hope nothing goes wrong, then."

Napoleon nodded. "That's my department. And since it is getting fairly late, I think I should keep our own exposure to danger to a minimum. I'll get a taxi to run us down to the hotel, and drop Archie off at the Miyako Maru on the way."

Service was prompt for the late hour, and a taxi appeared less than five minutes after the call. They loaded in, and Solo gave the driver directions to the Whampoa docks. The man nodded, and the little car leaped off up Mongkok Road. Three blocks later it turned left on Nathan, away from the downtown and the docks. Napoleon leaned forward.

"The Whampoa docks, driver," he said. "You should have turned right. Take the next right."

The driver released a flood of Chinese in an inland dialect Napoleon couldn't follow. He attempted Cantonese, and got no answer.

During the time this took, the taxi had crossed Boundary and started up a grade. The clapboard shanties became smaller and even less attractive, and there were fewer people on the road. Here and there a cultivated patch showed between the hovels, and only the tiny cooking fires marked the edges of the road.

Napoleon leaned back. "Something's wrong," he muttered to his friends, as he slipped his automatic out of its spring-clip holster. "We're going the wrong way."

A sign flashed by, flaring briefly in the headlights: TAI PO ROAD. An arrow bore to the right, and the car followed it.

Napoleon leaned forward again and said quietly, "You understood English well enough when we got in. Now understand this. Either you stop and turn this car around, or you'll see your brains splattered over the inside of the windshield."

The car slowed as the driver reached for the dashboard and pulled a knob. There was a pwangg! of a strong spring released and a sheet of metal shot up from the back of the front seat. It caught Napoleon across the wrist, a numbing blow that knocked the gun from his hand and almost cracked the bone. The gun fell into the front seat as the shield thumped against the roof, and Napoleon fell back.

Suzie leaned over him. "Napoleon!" she said. "What's going on?"

"Well, I wouldn't like to jump to an unwarranted conclusion, but I think we're being kidnapped." He picked himself up to a proper sitting position, massaging his wrist tenderly.

"But where could they be taking us?"

Archie scowled. "British possession is not very big. The only other place they could go is over the border."

Suzie looked shocked. "But I can't go over the border! I don't have a visa for Red China!"

"None of us do," said Napoleon. "That makes it a good place to get rid of us. But we have some twenty miles to go yet, if I remember this road, and I expect a helicopter from downtown can pull us out of the fire long before we get there." He winced slightly as he bent his wrist towards an inside pocket and pulled out his transceiver.

"Channel L, please. Channel L." The only answer was a burst of static.

He adjusted something slightly, pulled up the tiny antenna, and called again. Only the hiss and roar of a jammed frequency answered him. He sighed and replaced the device. "Well," he said, "it looks as if we'll have to get ourselves out of this one."

Some twenty minutes later the taxi pulled off the road and bumped to a stop near a cluster of huts surrounded by angular terraced hills. Shadowy figures hurried out of one of the huts as the taxi flashed its lights. They opened the doors from the outside, and regarded the three sleepers in the back seat for a moment. Then a quiet command in Chinese, and the three were picked up and borne back into the building.

The fresh air began to revive them, and Napoleon gradually became aware of being supported by his knees and armpits. Then a door slammed, somewhere beyond his head, and he was put down on his back on a rough floor. A voice in accented English said, "They are coming around. You didn't use enough gas after all."

Napoleon thought. As long as they know, there's not much use in pretending. He groaned a little and tried to sit up. Then he groaned realistically. Whatever they had used on him had left quite a headache. He forced open an eye and tried to bring the room into focus. It almost worked.

By the light of the single swinging lightbulb, five armed men were directing their attention towards the three figures on the floor. Archie was already sitting up, breathing deeply and looking around. Suzie was just beginning to move.

One of the men spoke. "Before you stand up, Mr. Solo, please to empty out your pockets completely. You, also, Mr. Gunderson."

Napoleon slowly went through his various pockets, laying out an assortment of things. One of the five came forward and took them. He nodded at the "fountain pen" and the cigarette case-lighter, and set them aside. The other objects he dropped into a small plastic bag of the type morgues use to contain the effects of the deceased. Napoleon noted the similarity, and carefully refrained from thinking about it.

The last item to be brought out was the Gyrojet pistol, which had been resting lightly in a deep-cut inside pocket of his coat. Its few ounces did not bag the jacket, and it was conveniently located. The Chinese lifted his gun warningly as Napoleon brought it out, and held out his other hand.

He took the little pistol, hefted it, and looked at it carefully. Then he held it up contemptuously for the others to see. "The American carries another gun! A toy one to frighten us with!"

The tall thin one who seemed to be the leader came forward and examined it closely. "Why do you carry a toy gun, Mr. Solo?"

Napoleon looked a little embarrassed. "Well," he said, "I just picked it up this afternoon for my nephew. He likes magic tricks."

"This is a trick gun? It does not just go click-click?"

"Well, not exactly. It's really sort of remarkable. A tribute to the ingenuity of your toymakers, and a whole lot of fun, too."

"What does it do?" The Chinese was beginning to be interested. Obviously this little contraption of stamped tin could not be a danger against five armed men, but he was still uncertain as to what it really was. "In my experience agents of the U.N.C.L.E. do not carry toy guns without reason."

Napoleon shrugged. "I would have left it at my hotel if we'd been there since I bought it."

The tall man suddenly pointed the pistol at Napoleon and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. And Napoleon, who knew better than to carry a gun cocked with a round in the chamber, didn't even flinch. Instead he laughed easily. "Not like that," he said condescendingly. "Here, let me show you." He held out his hand casually.