Текст книги "[Magazine 1966-­12] - The Goliath Affair"

Автор книги: John Jakes

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The Rolls motor hummed to life and the car swung back out the alley into the street, gathering speed. Helene got out a cigarette. Solo slumped against the leather. He was trying to gather his wits and not having much luck.

"Have you ever seen the Schwarzwald?" Helene inquired.

"The Black Forest? No. I don't think I'm going to like it."

"I assure you we shall do everything we can to make certain you don't. That is, before you die. What a dreary little man you are with your pretensions of strength! You don't know the meaning of strength. The joy of pure strength—"

Her fingers closed around the cigarette, crushing it to bits. She threw the remains on the floor of the car.

The Rolls sped on through Munich, heading in a direction Solo computed roughly as westward. He wondered whether the tiny transmitter concealed in the lining of his jacket was still functioning. If so, Illya would hear the signal begin to fade. He'd think Solo was smooching with this incredible, cruel-eyed superwoman who sat regarding him with such utter contempt—

At that moment Solo noticed a small pin on the collar of the leather jacket of the incredibly tall girl with the gun. The pin had a black border. In the center, on a white field, he saw the ugly configuration of a swastika.

"So we were right," he said. "The birds and the beasts have gotten together."

"Do you mean THRUSH and the Fourth Reich?" Helene asked. "You are correct. With one purpose." Her blue eyes flamed like illuminated diamonds, hard, cold. "To build an organization of such strength that the world cannot stand against us. We shall succeed."

The Rolls raced on out of the city. Trapped, Solo felt that Fraulein Helene Bauer just might be right about succeeding.

Because he, thus far, had failed.

ACT TWO – The Bigger They Come

ONE

A clock in the spire of the Lutheran church on the square chimed the hour of seven.

Sun spilled gold on to the sloping slate rooftops of the village of Ommenschnee. The gilt light painted the dun-colored cobbles of the square, where a stout farmer's cart drawn by a sway-backed horse was just clopping out of sight around the corner of an inn.

The windows of the inn were still tightly shuttered against the night.

Here a policeman wandered, there the driver of a milk lorry paused to pack his meerschaum with a cut plug before driving on with a puttering of exhaust.

Under the shadow of the porch arch of the great church, a smaller blob of shadow seemed to stir, as though about to venture forth among the few good souls who were beginning to move along the narrow streets of this hamlet deep in the pine-scented forest.

The shadow figure peering from behind a pillar at the picturesque square was an equally picturesque sight: a spindly, seedy peddler with a sack full of cheap imitations of Hummel figurines slung over his shoulder. He wore dark trousers, an ill-fitting coat which hung nearly to his knees and was nearly worn through at the elbows, and a battered old hat. The face of the itinerant peddler was the color of used leather, exceedingly lined. A white soup-handle mustache drooped below white eyebrows. But the man's eyes were alert, concerned—and young.

Finally this picturesque personage decided that he could cross the square in relative safety. The cobbles were filling with up-early pedestrians—several shopgirls; children riding bicycles; a couple of sporty youths on muttering motor scooters; half a dozen nuns hurrying towards a chapel of another religious persuasion. Into this setting stepped the disguised Illya Kuryakin, his bag of figurines rattling.

With shuffling step Illya made for a street which angled west from the square's far side. He kept his head down so that the brim of his hat hid his face. He was beginning to feel his exhaustion. He hadn't slept at all the past night, and to compound the fatigue, he was nagged by an unproveable certainty that his whereabouts were known to THRUSH.

The biggest question was—did THRUSH now have his friend Napoleon Solo in captivity?

A warbling note barely perceptible to Illya's ears because the receiver was swaddled in thick layers of cloth under his coat seemed to indicate so.

Where was Solo being held? Apparently westward, in the green-boughed fastness of the Black Forest.

Early last night Illya had been rather lacksadasically perusing the isometrics pamphlet in the hotel suite in Munich. Solo had been gone for almost an hour. Illya had just about decided that no amount of finger-flexing and bicep-tensing would transform him into a strong man. He had been about to phone the hotel pantry for a snack and a good stein of dark beer when he became aware that the rod-like communicator lying there on the coffee table was emitting a signal which was growing steadily weaker.

The next twenty minutes were desperate.

Keeping the communicator pressed against his left ear so as not to lose the signal, Illya phoned a lesser official of the Munich U.N.C.L.E. station and rather high-handedly commandeered the station's expensive electronic detection and search sedan. The car took ten minutes to arrive at the hotel; the operator had had a minor brush with the law over speeding. By then Illya had nearly lost the signal from his pocket communicator.

With an emotion almost akin to frenzy, he practically knocked the operator out of the front seat of the dark, unobtrusive sedan and leaped in.

For the next ten minutes he drove round and round Munich's downtown, steering with one hand while he used his right to twist, turn the various knobs and rheostats on the complicated dash panel.

At last a greenish tear-drop blip appeared on the display glass in the center of the panel. The blip signal corresponded in its interval with the nearly imperceptible warbling still coming from his pocket communicator on the seat beside him.

There! Illya was locked on to Solo's transmitting frequency. But where was Solo going?

After ten more minutes of cruising, the glass showed him.

Either under coercion or of his own free will, Napoleon Solo was heading west. The blip inched steadily toward the left of the screen.

In the direction of the Schwarzwald! Illya hit the gas pedal and sent the sedan careening through the streets at the edge of the nightclub district. After another interval of high-speed driving, he had the blip again centered in the display glass.

He drove steadily now, his nerves fine tuned by tension. The blip was not outrunning him.

At three in the morning the blip abruptly disappeared from the glass. Illya computed its last position to be some three miles northwest of a village which the map called Ommenschnee. Illya parked the car on the shoulder of the highway, which at this point cut through giant trees that soughed into the darkness.

Illya hadn't seen another vehicle for an hour and a half.

Working by the feeble glow of the dash instruments, he rummaged in a trunk which had been loaded aboard the sedan at his request. A sour face indicated his attitude toward the seamy contents of the Munich station's so-called Emergency Disguise Kit.

He had his choice of imitating a police officer, dressing up as a non-denominational nun—what were the Munich people thinking, anyway?—or settling for some scrofulous-looking rags which were meant to cast him in a peddler's role, if he judged by the sack of figurines that completed the outfit.

Slipping into the noisome garb, Illya made a mental note to write a memo to Mr. Waverly concerning the witless choice of quick-change outfits offered by the Munich station. For an U.N.C.L.E. operative to be caught masquerading as an officer of the law or as a member of a non-existent holy order was abolutely idiotic. Inefficiency, inefficiency everywhere!

Illya pulled the floppy hat down on his head and paused in his mental tirade. He realized with some chagrin that he had just been hunting a scapegoat.

He was desperately afraid that through his own ineptitude his friend Solo had falled into the hands of THRUSH.

But perhaps Solo had only discovered a particularly warm tip, and was off to follow it. Illya reassured himself with this thought as he slid the ersatz walnut dashboard in place over the electronic dials in the car, and locked all doors. The detection and search sedan was constructed of the heaviest steels and equipped with bullet-proof glass. It would take a heavy tank with its cannon blasting to gain entrance.

Illya began to trudge down the shoulder of the road. Pine needles crunched faintly under foot. Suddenly headlights sprang up behind him, racing fast.

Illya's heart slugged wildly as he started for the protection of the trees. He was too late—

The headlights sprayed his back white. Illya hunched over, swung around, slitting his eyes and hoping that the facial stain and white mustache would serve to make him look old. Like white-yellow juggernauts the headlamps raced at him. He prepared to reach for his long-muzzled U.N.C.L.E. pistol beneath his rags of disguise. The vehicle was almost on him -

There was a plaintive moo in the peaceful night as the truck sang past on rapidly humming tires. Illya feigned a rapid, rheumy-eyed blink the moment it went by. IN the backwash of its lights he saw the heads and horns of cattle outlined fleetingly against the stars.

As the eager dairy farmer raced onward toward his destination, a few more soothing moos floated out behind. Illya's heart beat slowed down.

He had been certain that he too had been tagged by THRUSH. But this time it had been a false alarm.

Illya shambled ahead, making himself practice the enfeebled gait of an old man. The trees melted from solid darkness into relative individuality as false dawn, and then the real thing, lit the landscape. Illya's mind churned. Question after question tumbled through it.

What had happened to Napoleon? It was quite unlike his partner to depart suddenly on a fresh trail without telling him. Further, there was no sound at all from the pocket communicator now. This indicated that Napoleon was not attempting to contact him and, worse, was no longer even transmitting.

Had THRUSH already moved in for the kill? Only further trudging to the westward, toward the point in the Black Forest where the display screen blip had blacked out, would reveal the possible tragic answer.

Presently Illya crept into cover at the Lutheran church and surveyed the square at Ommenschnee. Now, having crossed the square, he was moving down a narrow street where the houses were old, gabled, and close together. A slatternly woman dumped a pail of slops out an upstairs window. Illya had to hop to it to keep from being drenched.

He brandished a fist at the woman by way of keeping in character but he didn't stop to argue. In minutes he had left the village behind and was trudging slowly down what appeared to be a dirt truck track.

It branched off the main highway leading from Ommenschnee at the village limits.

The highway swung roughly southwest. The track went due west, the direction Illya wanted to go.

He had walked perhaps five hundred yards along the track and had just poked his head warily around a bend when he got quite a surprise.

Parked up ahead was the same farmer's truck that had passed him several hours ago.

In the bed of the truck, half a dozen beeves jostled one another, gently discontented but no longer lowing. It was too late for Illya to turn back. The truck driver, a portly German with ruddy cheeks and a mustache fully as flowing as Illya's fake one, had seen him.

The driver was sitting against the truck's left rear tire, making a morning meal of a butt of bread and a quart of milk. Illya's trained mind sensed something awry, but he did not immediately know what.

Once again he swept his gaze across the truck. He couldn't locate the cause of his instinctive suspicion. Perhaps it was the driver himself. He was an immense man, Illya Kuryakin saw, as the latter stood up.

The driver wiped his none too clean sleeve across his lips, getting rid of a foam of milk. He towered at least halfway up to the seven foot mark, and bore a huge paunch out in front of him. He wore nondescript clothes. His black-haired arms were far too long to be called normally proportioned.

Carefully Illya adjusted his peddler's pack on his left shoulder. That way, his right hand would be unencumbered if he needed to get at the long-snouted pistol in the trick pocket of his shabby coat.

He put on a witless expression and shambled up to the beefy driver, whose fat cheeks were burgher-red but whose eyes were no warmer than glaciers.

"Lost your way, have you, mein herr?" said the dairyman in German.

"Nein, nein," Illya answered with an idle grin. His German was perfect enough to pass muster. "I am on my way to the village. Hermann is my name."

"The village," said the driver, "is back the other way." He pointed a porcine thumb.

Illya blinked several times. What was wrong here? Some detail was out of place. Something so obvious he should recognize it instantly. But light was bad in the forest; there were many shadows, pierced only at random by sunbeams. Illya heard a distant chatter start, somewhere far behind him.

"The other way? That can't be right," Illya complained, trying to sound elderly and irritable. "I saw no village—"

"Then your eyes are blind, old one." The farmer grabbed Illya's right shoulder. His fingers were thick. He applied far too much pressure for one casually interested in Illya's behaviour.

The beeves in the rear of the truck were responding to the man's angry voice. They began to stamp and swivel their heads so that their horns caught the light. They mooed loudly. All except one, which seemed to be standing stock-still and glass-eyed in the center.

Glass-eyed? Illya looked again.

The farmer spun him around bodily. Whirled in a complete circle, Illya had a flash-pan view of the hide of that stoical bovine that did not move. He would have sworn he detected something which distinctly resembled a moth-hole in its side—

"Verdammt old fool, be on your way!" The dairyman gave Illya a pop in the back of the spine that nearly knocked him off his feet. The man tried to sound hearty as he added, "It's for your own good. You'll merely become lost in the forest and die of hunger. I won't have your death on my hands."

Tottering and capering and wondering how much longer he should maintain this feeble fiction of being old, Illya plucked two handfuls of figurines from his sack and waved them at the dairyman.

"I don't know what a rude person like you is doing on this road," Illya piped. "But I have figurines to sell in the village. Clever little figurines, see? I intend to pass and go on my way—" Illya continued his tottering progress until he was back to within a yard of the dairyman.

The dairyman's cheeks grew plum-colored. He whipped a snub-barrel automatic from his side pocket.

"Your persistence is admirable," he barked. "But it is also your downfall—Herr Illya Kuryakin."

And with his free hand the dairyman knocked the hat off Illya's head, revealing the U.N.C.L.E. agent's youthful bowlcut locks.

Cold in his belly, Illya stood at bay, hands full of figurines, eyes watching the gun muzzle most carefully for the jerk which would signal a shot that could very well end his life. Behind him Illya heard the chatter-and-buzz growing louder in the sky. Without looking around, he knew a helicopter was skimming the tops of the trees.

"We suspected you would be coming, Kuryakin," the dairyman said. "Ever since we took your friend Herr Solo last night, we have been looking—"

"Is Napoleon alive?" Illya interrupted.

Like all Thrush men, this one relished cruelty. He shrugged. "I can't say."

"Where is he?"

"Where you almost got to, before I chopped you down to size."

The dairyman jerked his head to indicate the green-dappled forest depths behind him, to the west.

With surprising agility for a man of his stature, the THRUSH operative jumped up onto the rear fender of the truck and balanced himself, the gun muzzle never wavering from Illya's chest.

The agent reached with his free hand and caught hold of the left horn of the bovine which was standing statue-still in the center of the other animals. It was standing statue-still because it was dead and stuffed, as was revealed when the agent snapped off its left horn and pulled it toward him.

A cable ran from the center of the horn back into the animal's head. The agent said, "I would have taken you when I passed you earlier on the highway, but we preferred to lay the trap this side of Ommenschnee. It's quieter. Sometimes that highway is heavily trafficked before dawn."

The agent thumbed a yellow spot on the horn and the eyes of the phony beef began to blink brightly, first one, then another.

This electrical display somewhat upset the other animals. They began to moo plaintively once more. Into the point of the horn the agent said cheerfully, "Achtung, sky one. Achtung! Gerhard speaking. No need for you to land with our little friends. I have Kuryakin prisoner.

"The plan is working perfectly, isn't it? They've gotten Solo and now his chum has come running right after him. I shall drive him on in. He's showing no fight. Gerhard signing off—"

Illya flung both handfuls of figurines at the THRUSH agent and dove for the dirt.

The figurines smacked Gerhard in the face sufficiently hard to cause him to lose his balance. He fell from the fender, cursing. As he fell he managed to twist and fire. Illya rolled desperately through the grass as the bullet whizzed by.

Gerhard hit the ground and shot twice more. Illya kept rolling, fighting to drag out his long-muzzled pistol as he rolled. Gerhard lumbered to his feet. He was standing now, had the right angle, could shoot downward at Illya, who was still scrabbling on the ground.

At the first shot, the animals in the truck had begun to moo more loudly, frightened. The electrified eyes of the false beef changed from white to red and flashed with a panicky speeded-up rhythm. The microphone on its cord had fallen over the side of the truck and had fallen down. From it crackled an anxious voice shooting questions in German.

On the ground Illya desperately tried to bring his right arm up in time to shoot. Gerhard had him centered in his sight.

The agent's cheeks worked puffily with hatred. Gerhard's index finger whitened on the trigger. Illya said a quick prayer—

From behind, Gerhard was stabbed in the neck by the tossing horns of a frantic steer lunging against the truck's staked side. Gerhard yowled. He stumbled off balance just as the gun exploded.

The shot winged past Illya's head by a fractional margin. His lips went white and he thumbed his weapon onto rapid-fire.

The gun's stuttering filled the sun-dappled roadside with thunder. Gerhard howled in rage, catapulting backward with holes in his belly.

He died as he hit the ground.

Panting, Illya whirled around. A shadow flickered over the roadway. The THRUSH helicopter was dropping fast, its rotors churning the air just above the treetops and lashing the leaves to a fury. Gerhard's sudden break in communication had alarmed the skyborne members of the trapping team. Sunlight flared on the 'copter's cockpit glass and on two brighter circles within—the lenses of field glasses watching him.

Sprinting, Illya reached the truck and leaped inside. He flicked over the key, hit the accelerator and slammed the shift rod practically simultaneously. The truck leaped ahead.

He fought to control it. The cattle, maddened, were lurching back and forth like juggernauts in the rear. In the side mirror Illya glimpsed the helicopter setting down in the center of the dirt track. Men leaped out, armed with machine pistols.

A metallic chatter racketed up behind him. Then came a soft, plopping explosion. Another.

The slugs fired by the THRUSH agents had blown the rear tires.

The truck veered wildly, seesawing from side to side along the track. The machine pistols continued to burp and chatter. Bullets pinged and whanged into the truck body. Ahead, a large and adamant oak tree loomed. The truck raced straight into it, out of control.

Illya levered open the left hand door and leaped out. The dairy truck slammed into the tree with a huge crash. The cattle battered against the slatted sides of the truck, smashing through them at last. All the beeves leaped down, tumbling over themselves and stampeded away into the forest.

All, that is, except the electronic marvel. It remained steadfastly behind, missing one horn and its light-bulb eyes now blinking green with alarmed rapidity.

The gasoline tank of the truck let loose. The whole vehicle went up in a boom and blast of fire.

Heat seared Illya's cheeks where he lay on the ground, his right leg bent under him. Instinctively he averted his face, came up coughing in a cloud of nauseous black smoke. The smoke screened his movements temporarily, allowed him to totter to his feet.

Abruptly his right leg went bad, jelly-like. He nearly fell.

He stumbled across a massive tree trunk, grimacing in pain. In the jump from the truck, he'd bunged up the leg. He started to hobble.

A new, terrifying sound split the morning air. Back along the road rose the frenzied yelping of dogs.

Illya lurched into a relatively shadowed area to one side of the dirt track. He risked a glance backward. What he saw chilled him clean through.

Down from the helicopter leaped three uniformed THRUSH officers in boots and gauntlets. Each man held a trio of leather leashes in his right hand. At the end of those leashes strained and slavered nine of the most murderous mastiffs Illya Kuryakin had ever seen.

The dogs yipped and bayed, eyes rolling, tongues lolling, vicious fangs dripping. The first officer released his leashes. The mastiffs shot ahead. The other six came right behind, a line of red maws and relentless teeth coming at Illya with rocket speed.

He lifted his long-muzzled pistol and squeezed off a shot. His vision was blurred from shock. He missed.

The dogs were halfway to the truck. Over the crackling of flames from the wrecked vehicle came the hoarse scream of the senior THRUSH officer:

"Kill!" he howled at his animals. "Kill, kill, kill!"

Sweat poured down Illya Kuryakin's forehead. He could never shoot all the dogs in time. He swung around and began to hobble through the forest. Pain beat unmercifully through his right leg.

Snap-and-yap, snarl-and-yelp, the dogs came on behind him. In seconds the chase assumed an eerie dream-like aura as Illya limped and dodged through sunshine and shadow-patches. He had no time to look around. The savage snapping of the killer jaws came closer. Closer—

A certain cold, emotionless professionalism swept over Illya then. Despite the pain and horror of the chase, he managed to pull out a small compass and hold it up in front of his eyes. The needle jiggled wildly, but its direction was still positive enough to show him that he was going the right way.

Well, he thought as he pelted ahead, this was the ultimate purpose for which he had been trained—to perish like a professional, not a dithering amateur.

Somewhere in the Black Forest to the west, Napoleon Solo was being held a prisoner.

At least, Illya said to himself, when the dogs drag me down, I'll be right on course.

TWO

The blip which indicated Napoleon Solo's position to Illya Kuryakin had disappeared in the darkest, bitterest hour of the night—three in the morning. At that hour, though Solo wasn't aware of it, his pocket transmitter had gone dead and caused the blip to vanish.

The reason was that Solo, riding in the Rolls with Helene Bauer at his side, had passed through a stone wall, as well as through a wall of electronic impulses which immediately nullified the effect of any spy or homing devices an interloper might be carrying.

The wall was high, its stone blocks huge and gray. As the Rolls swept up to it and braked, Solo saw two huge men in THRUSH uniforms step into the headlamp glare. Both had misshapen faces and the oversized shoulders and arms reminiscent of a Klaanger. They peered into the headlights in a dull-witted way.

"Get those gates open, you incompetents!" snarled the amazon at the wheel. "The Herr Doktor's daughter is here."

The guard offered feeble apologies: "I'm new. You didn't give the countersign—"

"You miserable wretch!" she cried in a temper. "We've been driving all night!"

She snatched the Luger from the hand of the girl beside her in the front seat and promptly fired a bullet into the guard's left thigh. The man fell, writhing and shrieking.

"There's the countersign," the girl declared airily, passing the gun back.

The other guard rushed into a control booth. Instantly, black iron gates swung open.

They were somewhere deep in the Black Forest, Solo knew. But he could tell little else, except that the stone wall was very high and thick.

The girl hummed as the Rolls eased forward.

A rustling of Helene Bauer's skirt as she shifted position caused Solo to glance around.

He'd been watching the tableau outside: one THRUSH guard kneeling beside his wounded comrade and directing ugly glances at the car's occupants as the Rolls picked up speed. Mentally Solo tabulated the information. So there was no great amount of love lost between the ex-Nazis and certain of the THRUSH personnel, eh? Perhaps that situation might somehow prove valuable.

Solo's nerves were wire-taut. His belly had a chill, empty feeling. But some of his nonchalance was returning.

He especially wanted to find out the exact nature of the union between these two fanatical power groups and, if possible, live long enough to at least communicate the facts to Illya—

That memory of Illya made him wonder about the tiny transmitter hidden in his jacket. Was it functioning? Certainly he couldn't rely on that -

Helene's skirt rustled. She had leaned forward to tap the Amazon driver on the shoulder.

"Inge," Helene said, "that shooting was unnecessary."

Inge half-turned. Her beautiful, stony profile was limned by the pale glow of the dash instruments.

"I am sorry," she said, so flatly it was clear that she meant just the opposite.

"You and your THRUSH pals certainly have a nice relationship," Solo smiled.

Helene spun around. "Be quiet! We work together very smoothly."

"At what? Demolishing each other? Well, I suppose you can't expect anything else when you make one bunch of paranoid killers the bedfellows of another. But then the problem becomes, which bunch is worse?"

Helene's lip quivered. For one moment Solo was not positive whether the girl intended to curse him or break into tears. He had probed and found a weakness. Helene's face froze into determined lines, but not before Solo saw a doubtful, hesitant look in her pretty eyes.

Was she as callous and as convinced of the rightness of her cause as she pretended to be? Or was there self-doubt, a deeply repressed feeling that she was in league with monsters?

Perhaps he was over-reacting to that fleeting, uncertain expression. But Helene would bear watching.

In a moment Helene had recovered and was as calm as ever:

"I don't care for your remarks, Solo. I would gladly turn you over to Inge for a bit of discipline if my father did not have another important use for your carcass."

The word carcass made Solo's spinal column crawl.

Inge laughed contemptuously:

"He wouldn't last five minutes with me, Fraulein Helene. He's obviously a weak, decadent type, unused to the outdoors and the joy of physical exercise. I would make liver sausage paste of his bones before he could scream twice. Of course I would be pleased to try—"

"I'll bet you would," Solo said.

Helene was sitting far forward on the seat, staring down the tunnel of the headlights. The Rolls was driving up a recently blacktopped drive. On either side of it Solo could see neatly cut and luxuriant turf.

"Sorry to disappoint you, Solo," Helene said. "My father really is in need of your body."

"What has your father got to do with this?"

Helene's smile was rather ghoulish. "In good time, Solo. In good time."

The Rolls slowed down, curving around a U-shaped drive past some formally clipped boxwood hedges. Then the headlamps swept past the corner of a great stone house. The vehicle braked.

Inge and her companion leaped out. Lugers glittered in their big fists.

A door slammed at the front of the house. No lights showed yet. The area around the car filled quickly with more THRUSH soldiers, all bearing sidearms at ready.

An officer touched his cap and held the door open for Helene. Solo got out after her.

"This way, please," Helene said, mounting a series of stone steps.

Solo followed. He was able to estimate the size of the house whose front staircase they were climbing—it was immense, towering up at least three floors and spreading out laterally in a series of equally large wings to his right and left. A spacious lawn of at least two acres spread out back there toward the gate. A spot of light in the guard booth indicated the great distance they had driven.

Helene had moved in beside him as they ascended the stairs, saying:

"This place is eight centuries old. It was an ancient baronial estate before it was acquired and refurbished for our needs. You shall see."

With this grotesquely cheerful warning, she led the way through huge bronze doors bearing rampant lions in bas relief. Inside Solo found himself in total darkness.

There was a motorized whirr. The giant doors shut with a ponderous chunk. Dazzling lights from a crystal chandelier sprung on.

Solo had thought quickly about making a play in the darkness. Things happened too fast. He had a vivid if fleeting impression of being in a spacious, marble-floored foyer with colorful tapestries on the walls. The foyer was tight as a box. All other doors leading out of it were shut. Solo and Helene were alone in the center of the floor, and before Solo half grasped all the details of the surroundings, the floor began to sink beneath them.

The walls remained where they were.

The tapestries and the chandelier rose away. When the marble floor had dropped perhaps twelve feet—down here the walls were cinder block, and set with recessed white lights behind frosted glass—two steel panels shot out from the baseboards of the foyer above. The panels met in the center with a clang, immediately providing a new floor for the foyer and a ceiling for the shaft through which they were descending.